To many amps?

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Smart $

Esteemed Member
Location
Ohio
well, its 125% continuous + 100% non-continuous. certainly using just 125% is ok.

whats not so clear to me is where diversity comes in. say four 15A single outlets on a bc w/ 15A ocpd. the bc has possibility to be loaded to 60A, so is the calc'd load now 48A?
How hard is it to understand that a 15A breaker limits the load to 15A (as calculated under Article 220) no matter how many receptacles are on the circuit. In real life the load is limited to the tripping of the breaker (mostly).
 

FionaZuppa

Senior Member
Location
AZ
Occupation
Part Time Electrician (semi retired, old) - EE retired.
How hard is it to understand that a 15A breaker limits the load to 15A (as calculated under Article 220) no matter how many receptacles are on the circuit. In real life the load is limited to the tripping of the breaker (mostly).

it was just a calculation question. there is no way to calc the actual demand of outlets other than to consider that every outlet could get a 15A plug at the same time. this doesnt really jive with calculating the load for a bc that feeds outlets, we just rely on the ocpd, etc.
 

mwm1752

Senior Member
Location
Aspen, Colo
This may come as a common sense question to some but here goes. A lady has a duplex gfci receptacle on a 120v circuit with 20A breaker. Coming from each receptacle is a power strip rated for 12A. She has 2 different things that are going to be plugged in but there's 5 of each for a total of 10. all together will pull 22.5A. I know your not supposed to put over 80% load on a breaker right? I'm also thinking the gfci would keep tripping or the power strip itself would keep tripping. Would i need to wire up another circuit? Thanks


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Sounds like my wife -- I say woman don't plug so many things in - she says ok & 10 minutes later its' all plugged in again -- got no control over what she does can only apply advice -- or add another circuit but that just gives her more to plug in
 

Kentuckian

Member
Location
Kentucky
Thanks for everyone ones input. Turns out she was able to move the location to across the room. There's 2 outlets near by on separate circuits. Each not even pulling an amp so very thing should work out good.


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Smart $

Esteemed Member
Location
Ohio
it was just a calculation question. there is no way to calc the actual demand of outlets other than to consider that every outlet could get a 15A plug at the same time. this doesnt really jive with calculating the load for a bc that feeds outlets, we just rely on the ocpd, etc.
If you look at it that way, you're going to be running a lot of circuits. :happyyes:

180VA isn't a bad average... for lots of obscure outlets and maybe one heavily loaded.


What it amounts to is the designer and/or installer are better suited to determine how many receptacles to put on a circuit than Code is... so Code just provides some guidelines... and that is regarding general use receptacles (i.e. unknown loads). When you know the load, it gets added into calculated load at face (nameplate) value.
 
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