3-Phase Power Distribution in Nottingham, engineered, not improvised.

Service overview

What "3-Phase Power Distribution" actually means in Nottingham.

Three-phase power distribution is the heart of industrial electrical work — the 400V supply that feeds CNC machines, compressors, refrigeration packs, lifts, ovens, production lines, EV charger arrays, and everything else that draws too much current for a single-phase supply to deliver cleanly.

We design and install three-phase distribution from the supply head down: incoming switchgear, panel boards, sub-mains in SWA or busbar, machine connections in flex or armoured, and the protection and discrimination scheme that means a fault on one machine doesn't take the whole plant down.

Typical jobs: a manufacturer in NG6 adding a CNC and discovering the existing sub-main is undersized; a food production site in Mansfield expanding refrigeration; a multi-let industrial estate in Hucknall where every tenant has different machinery and every tenant blames everyone else when the main breaker trips. We design out the ambiguity.

The honest bit

The cost of getting industrial distribution wrong

Industrial distribution failures are expensive. A single CNC sitting idle is £200–£600 an hour in lost production. A refrigeration pack tripping for two days writes off the contents. A printing press that nuisance-trips weekly burns out spindle bearings prematurely.

We see three repeating root causes. Sub-mains undersized for the design load (someone added a machine and didn't recalculate). No discrimination study (so a fault on a £3k machine trips the £80k incomer). And labelling drift — the original circuit chart hasn't been updated through three tenancy changes, so isolation in a real emergency is guesswork.

All three are design failures, not installation failures. The fix is engineering before tools — load calculation, single-line drawing, discrimination study, and an as-built that gets updated every time a circuit changes. That is the model we work to.

How we deliver it

Our 3-phase power distribution process, step by step.

1. 1. Demand survey

   We meter the existing supply over 1–2 weeks, model the new load, identify peak vs continuous demand and confirm the supply head can carry it.

2. 2. Design pack

   Single-line drawing, cable schedule, discrimination check, costed bill of materials. You sign off before tools come on site.

3. 3. DNO liaison if needed

   If supply needs upgrading or new metering, we handle the DNO application end-to-end with National Grid Electricity Distribution.

4. 4. Install during planned downtime

   Sequenced around your shift pattern. Hot-swap where safe, full isolation where not. Minute-by-minute plan agreed before shutdown.

5. 5. Test, commission, hand over

   Insulation, earth fault loop, RCD timing, thermography under load. As-built drawings, EIC, test schedule. Done.

Why it matters

What you actually get.

70mm² 4-core SWA sub-main and 250A panel board after commissioning at a Hucknall manufacturing unit.

Technical depth

Sizing, busbar vs SWA, and discrimination — the parts a generalist gets wrong

Industrial cable sizing has to handle three constraints simultaneously: continuous current under ambient conditions, voltage drop at the most distant load (max 5% per BS 7671), and short-circuit withstand for the time it takes the upstream protection to clear a fault. Skip any one and you end up with a sub-main that runs warm, gives nuisance under-voltage at the end machine, or fails on the first real fault. We size against all three on every job and document the calculations on the drawing pack.

Busbar trunking versus SWA cable is a common decision point. Busbar (e.g. Schneider Canalis, Siemens BD2) costs more upfront but tap-off boxes can be added without isolating the whole run — invaluable for multi-tenant industrial estates where the next tenant will inevitably want a 63A spur. SWA is cheaper, easier on retrofit, and the right answer for fixed-load installations where the configuration won't change.

Discrimination (selectivity) is the discipline of arranging protection so a downstream fault trips only the local device, not the upstream one. On 3-phase systems with multiple cascade levels, this means picking trip curves and current ratings deliberately — not just using the lowest rating that fits. We curve-match every cascade above 100A and document the selectivity ratio on the drawing. It is the difference between a single machine going off for 20 minutes and the whole factory floor going off for two hours.

Scope	Typical price (incl. VAT)	Notes
Single-machine 3-phase connection (under 32A)	£950 – £1,800	From existing distribution, including isolator and EIC.
New panel board + 4 sub-mains (mid-size unit)	£4,500 – £9,500	Typical workshop or small factory upgrade.
Full distribution refit (single tenancy, 100–250A supply)	£12,000 – £35,000	Strip-out, new switchgear, sub-mains, machine connections, drawings.
Multi-tenant industrial estate distribution	£25,000 – £120,000+	Quoted by site survey only — every estate different.

What changes the price

• Whether DNO supply upgrade is needed
• Busbar vs SWA distribution
• Number of sub-mains and tap-offs
• Discrimination level required
• Planned downtime windows (out-of-hours adds 25–40%)

The person responsible

Joshua Richardson & Benjamin Clurow

Co-Directors

NICEIC Approved Contractor, NICEIC Part-P Domestic Installer

Joshua Richardson and Benjamin Clurow co-founded JBRC Ltd and are the two named directors at Companies House (#17015285). They jointly run the business — both surveying, pricing and signing off industrial three-phase power and machine connections across Nottingham, so every customer is dealing directly with a director from quote through to certification.

Recent jobs

Real 3-phase power distribution work, recently signed off.

CNC machining unit, NG6 — 4 new machine connections + sub-main upgrade.

Sub-main upsized from 50mm² to 70mm² SWA. Discrimination study passed. No nuisance trips since.

Bulwell, Nottingham

Refrigeration pack expansion, Mansfield food site.

Phased install over 3 nights. No production lost. Pack live at 6am Monday morning each week.

Mansfield

Multi-tenant estate, Hucknall — busbar refit on landlord supply.

Schneider Canalis busbar; new tenants now connect in a day with a tap-off box, not a week with a contractor visit.

Hucknall, Nottinghamshire