There's no way you're only getting 20 amps to your house.
A microwave will consume 8-12 amps. A desktop computer is around 3-5 amps. I don't know what my electric stove used when I still had one, but it needed a 40 amp breaker on its own.
The standard home contract in Italy is 3.3kW, at 230V it's less that 15 amps for a resistive load. The meter will allow you to go over the allotted power for some time before disconnecting you though (the amount of time is inversely proportional to how much your going over, and I don't think you can ever go over 4kW).
Heating and stoves are gas based (ovens usually not though); going over the limit is not usual, the only common problem is when using air conditioning in summer which is becoming more widespread, and so are higher power contracts (we're not talking more than 6kW, though).
According to my utility, I consume annually 2660kWh, that is 300W average, much less than the 1.2KW for an American household.
Note that for home contracts the limit (and billing) is on power, not amps, so using inductive or reactive loads will not penalize you.
Here in Spain we're paying a lot for the power allotted to the contract, being around 30 to 40% of the bill.
So, I'm paying around 20€ (before taxes) just for having a 5.75kW contract, and then I have to add my kWh consumption. So reducing your consumption doesn't reflect that much on your bills.
Here it is 2 €/month/kW, my total bill was 40-50 €/month before I had a solar roof installed. I consumed about 400 W on average in a house (with solar the consumption is up by 60 W because of the inverter, but I save 30 to 70% plus I can sell a little surplus).
Italy used to be strange in that there were two electric feeds per house: One for low-power loads and one for high-power loads. Is that system gone now?
That's internal, right now. You don't get two lines from the grid. But you have multiple internal lines, and usually one 10A lines is mostly for the lights, other include more hungry appliances.
You mean there are multiple circuits inside the house? Isn't that totally normal? My small bungalow has 24 circuits on 200 amp service, plus a subpanel feeding the shop and sauna.
Remember there are some Europeans around running 240v ;) Also, at least on the bigger European cities, apartments and flats are more popular than houses, son usually the energy need is lower. And, of course, energy prices!
Here, in Madrid, most of my friends are running 10 to 20 amps. I'm an outlier, running 25amps (5.75 kW) because all my stuff is electric (water heater, cold/hot air conditioning, microwave, glass-ceramic stove...).
My Ryzen 5 desktop is consuming 0.3 to 0.5amps (being 50 to 120watts at 220V), supposing you're using 110volts your desktop computer must be a big gaming rig if it's consuming 350 to 550watts ;)
> supposing you're using 110volts your desktop computer must be a big gaming rig if it's consuming 350 to 550watts ;)
Yup. :-D
Not a BIG rig, but certainly respectable. i9-9900k [0], GeForce GTX 1070 [1], 32 gig of DDR4, 1 TB NVMe, 1 TB SSD, 2 TB HD.
[0] Yes, I know I don't need an i9 for gaming. I don't even need an i7. But I wanted future proofing and bragging rights.
[1] "An i9, but only a GTX 1070?" you might ask. I got the 1070 for free by winning a contest sponsored by MSI. At the time I had an i7-3770k. When I upgraded to the i9 in December, I didn't feel it was worth spending hundreds of dollars for an RTX 2080 (or even 2070) as the performance difference wasn't enough. I'll probably get something from the next gen RTX (3080? 2180? Whatever they call it).
I have a relatively simple GPU with my Rizen, it's ok for my use and GPUs are damn expensive, I understand ;)
BTW, have you metered your consumption? Doing some math on the top of my head, on regular use you "shouldn't" go over 200W and I don't think you should get over 400 in your use peaks. Just out of curiosity because I'm not used to those relatively power hungry GPUs :)
Are you sure your intake fuse is only 20A? Where I live it is normal for each circuit to have 16A, and if you have induction stove at least 20A for it. My intake fuse is only 55A (230V) since I have an old house, but should be upgraded
I checked now and the fuses are 15 A + 15 A, but the utility company disconnects me if I go over about 4 kW (18 A), or over 3.3 kW for more than a few minutes.
My sister-in-law has an induction stove, so she gets 40 A and the stove is connected directly to a separate bigger fuse.
That is really strange. Here, the utility company would be happy to have you buy lots more power.
Are you lacking a meter? Is the utility company unable to read your meter remotely and unwilling to send a truck out to read it? This would explain things, in which case you'd want to charge batteries (for free!) whenever you don't need all the power you have purchased.
Fuses are weird too. Those went out of style 60 years ago.
Maybe you will find this weird: I have a device that lets the utility company cut the power to my water heater. They can remotely activate it if they are having problems. In exchange for having this, I get a discount.
No, they can remotely read it. Italy had one of the first smart grids in fact.
It is just the standard here to only buy 3.3 kW unless you have induction stoves. Having more power available costs a little more, and on top of that you pay for what you consume.
As to "fuse", my mistake as I am not a native speaker. I meant breaker.
A microwave will consume 8-12 amps. A desktop computer is around 3-5 amps. I don't know what my electric stove used when I still had one, but it needed a 40 amp breaker on its own.