CT metering fuses & wire terminations

[69gp]

I was on a site the other day and came across this CT metering on a 1200 amp panel. Couple of things struck me as not being correct. Lugs are only designed for one wire and my question to them was what are the wires torqued to. Black cables are 4/0 aluminum and the small wires are only #12 copper. My feelings are the #12's should be on a breaker and not under the lugs.

 

[GoldDigger]

What are those wires going to?
If they are the potential leads to the meter, then POCO would not like it to be that easy to turn them off.
It looks like there are inline fuse holders for wire protection in them.
I do agree that there is a potential (!) problem with the double lugging of the small wires.

 

[stevebea]

I was on a site the other day and came across this CT metering on a 1200 amp panel. Couple of things struck me as not being correct. Lugs are only designed for one wire and my question to them was what are the wires torqued to. Black cables are 4/0 aluminum and the small wires are only #12 copper. My feelings are the #12's should be on a breaker and not under the lugs.

Looks like the CT leads go to to device in bubble wrap. Power Quality Meter ?

 

[69gp]

What are those wires going to?
If they are the potential leads to the meter, then POCO would not like it to be that easy to turn them off.
It looks like there are inline fuse holders for wire protection in them.
I do agree that there is a potential (!) problem with the double lugging of the small wires.

its for net metering for a solar site. Private not Poco metering and yes there are inline fuses. From my experience you can only torque one wire to the right setting. If you torque the smaller wire to the proper torque than the larger wire will be way under torqued. If you torque the larger cable to its appropriate setting that it will be to much for the smaller wires and possibly crushing or breaking the wire.

 

[meternerd]

Voltage leads to a customer KW/KWh meter. There is almost no current on the voltage leads, so this is not that unusual. CT's supply current. As a utility, we do similar connections for customer metering. Not done on the POCO metering side, but in a pump station, it's pretty common.

 

[infinity]

We've installed these for the monitoring of a Co-gen system. This is without the doubling up on one lug.

 

[Cow]

Is this a temporary or permanent install?

I've done two week temporary installs similar to this for customers who need power monitoring for energy rebates from the state. But, if this is permanent, those wires should be terminated properly and not in the same lugs as the 4/0's.

 

[meternerd]

Agreed...but many times there is no provision for smaller wire and lugs (as in the picture). No excuse for not doing it right, but likely the way it's done in many cases. I have to admit that even I, the "guru" of utility stuff, have done it that way. My bad! Have I ever had a problem? Nope.

 

[69gp]

Agreed...but many times there is no provision for smaller wire and lugs (as in the picture). No excuse for not doing it right, but likely the way it's done in many cases. I have to admit that even I, the "guru" of utility stuff, have done it that way. My bad! Have I ever had a problem? Nope.

Well this is the way I see it. Like you said its done like this all the time guess its almost a standard. But its not legal and I am trying to put a list together for the owner of the site to go after the installing contractor. This project has so much stuff wrong with it that I cannot believe that the electrical inspector even passed this. Undersized feeders, 2 different cables for parallel feeders a 500 mcm and a 4/0 cable, 4-4/0 parallel aluminum cables to feed a 1200 amp panel and on and on and on with code violations. Now I am not even going to get into not following the project specifications. And finally piss poor workmanship makes me wanna puke.