Cost: Copper vs Alum Feeder

[Hoyt2020]

I am looking for information on what percentage cost (installed - material and labor) savings I could obtain on a feeder by going from copper to aluminum: 275' - 800 amp 3P / 3W in RSC, Interior exposed location in a manufacturing facility. Just looking for aprox. savings percentage.

Any info would be appreciated.

Thxs!

 

[tom baker]

You could some of the basic work...size the conduit, size the parallel sets, then price difference in cu or aL

 

[Hoyt2020]

I do not have access to current pricing. That is why I asked.

 

[Rock86]

Why not call a local supplier or just build a shopping cart on Platt.com for what you need. Copper is significantly more. Just as an example... 400mcm AL = 1.74/ft, vs Cu = 11.59/ft

 

[Dennis Alwon]

With the cost of copper my bet is aluminum would be way cheaper, unless aluminum prices have doubled also.

 

[electrofelon]

To put it precisely, aluminum will be drastically cheaper

 

[tom baker]

You could some of the basic work...size the conduit, size the parallel sets, then price difference in cu or aL

Then send to wholesale house for a quote.

 

[don_resqcapt19]

This one might be close. If you are using 3 parallel sets, you can fit three 300 kcmil copper in a 2" rigid conduit, but you would need 600 kcmil aluminum requiring 3" rigid. When you step over 2" for rigid conduit there is a big change in both the material and the labor.

 

[electrofelon]

This one might be close. If you are using 3 parallel sets, you can fit three 300 kcmil copper in a 2" rigid conduit, but you would need 600 kcmil aluminum requiring 3" rigid. When you step over 2" for rigid conduit there is a big change in both the material and the labor.

Or could think of it as running a 4th set, say 4 sets of 250 AL. In general I would say pulling and making up two sizes up AL is much easier and quicker than copper, so you have some labor saving there, but have an extra set of course. Labor rates are a big variable. For me copper is always drastically more expensive. Could be a different story for an area with very high labor rates.

 

[don_resqcapt19]

Or could think of it as running a 4th set, say 4 sets of 250 AL. In general I would say pulling and making up two sizes up AL is much easier and quicker than copper, so you have some labor saving there, but have an extra set of course. Labor rates are a big variable. For me copper is always drastically more expensive. Could be a different story for an area with very high labor rates.

You would have to run the numbers and making a 4th run of 2" rigid will likely be a fair amount cheaper than 3 runs of 3" rigid for the conduit. That could very well make it cheaper than the copper with the huge difference in copper V aluminum costs.

Have never used aluminum conductor very much as almost all of the projects I have worked on had copper only specs.

As far as labor rates, the billing rate in my area is $2 to $2.5 per minute.