How much power can a house with 3 x 25amps electricity supply?

Question

Please excuse the poorly phrased header - I am (hopefully not for long thanks to you) electrically dumb.

I'm looking at moving to a house in the countryside to live a more DIY lifestyle. Unfortunately, I don't speak the language of the landlord, and I'm going on information my Wife has shared with me.

She told me that the owner said the property has '3 x 25amp' power supply. The house is connected to the electrical grid. So, what does this mean - 3 x 25amp? What sort of power can I expect from this? Will it run a decent size fridge, plus computers, plus lights and kitchen appliances all at the same time? Or will I need to be balancing the load a bit carefully?

Is there more questions I need to ask the owner in order to make any intelligent decision on this matter? Like how many watts that is?

Note: this is in Europe, where the power is usually 220/240v.

Answer 1

230 Volts AC RMS x 3 x 25 Amps = 17.25 kilowatts power.

Your appliances are rated in Watts, add them up and see if the total is more than 17,250.

In most cases the rating is a peak rating (e.g. at start-up after a rural power-cut), the average will be less.

Answer 2

3 x 25A is an odd way of saying it. However, 3 is a magic number in electrical power transmission, because 3-phase power is a common method of electrical distribution.

http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/north-american-versus-european-distribution-systems

If so, you have a lot of total power, but only a limited amount on each phase. That tends to come up if you have large electric appliances like stoves, dryers, hot water heaters or large air conditioning units - consideration must be made so they aren't all stacked on one phase. Some (stoves, water heaters) are designed to use 3-phase if available.