Grounded Conductor

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bsrgames

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Hi,

This question is really trivial but I am having an issue with my Electrician concerning the appropriate color of the neutral conductor. The product that we make is shipped overseas and he is stating that we can use the color blue to identify the neutral, though internal standards are:

Brown - Hot
Blue - Neutral
Green - Ground

He states that we are fine using:

Black - Hot
Blue - Neutral
Green - Ground

I believe this to be inaccurate as I want to have our product to NEC specs and I could not find anywhere in the code to where it states that we can identify the neutral conductor as blue. The sections that I saw have shown that it is to be identified as White or Gray.

In addition when they are splicing the wire for the transformer they are just tying black to black blue to white and red to green. I think that I have a major issue with the mismatching of colors in the systems that we are doing.

Can anyone shed some insight?
 
As far as I understand it that blue is standard overseas as the neutral. We often get products here with blue wire for the neutral but as long as it is third party approved it usually is not an issue.
 
bsrgames said:
Would that pass an electrical inspection with a blue neutral conductor?
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It's a product, not fixed wiring. It wouldn't undergo NEC inspection. Yes, Brown, Blue and Green are typical and standard for assemblies that are expected to be both domestic and international. I don't know if Black, Blue, Green is a problem, but it is not standard.
 
If UL or accepts the product as it is, so does the NEC. If you want to align your conductor colours with NEC standards, I believe that is a choice. The NEC does not put a seal of approval on products.

How would an inspector see the blue conductor ? The brown, blue, green colour scheme I have seen inside power cords, they had to be cut open to see the different colours.

Blue with 3 white stripes along it's entire length is acceptable, see 200.6(A).
 
SG-1 said:
If UL or accepts the product as it is, so does the NEC. If you want to align your conductor colours with NEC standards, I believe that is a choice. The NEC does not put a seal of approval on products.

How would an inspector see the blue conductor ? The brown, blue, green colour scheme I have seen inside power cords, they had to be cut open to see the different colours.

Blue with 3 white stripes along it's entire length is acceptable, see 200.6(A).
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I agree. We also use blue with the white stripes.
 
bsrgames said:
I believe this to be inaccurate as I want to have our product to NEC specs and I could not find anywhere in the code to where it states that we can identify the neutral conductor as blue. The sections that I saw have shown that it is to be identified as White or Gray.
Click to expand...

Article section 400.22(C) might be of interest.

Roger
 
Actually the neutral color is "light blue" or what many call baby or sky blue. It is not as dark as the typical blue phasing color.
 
I've always thought they had it backwards. Brown is the color of earth, and blue is sky - not ground.
 
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