Grounding 2 Services

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bfingland

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The situation: I have two separate electrical services running to a building. The first is the service for the building itself, mounted inside, with branch circuits feeding the interior loads and exterior building lighting and power. The second is mounted outside and intended to serve the greater site lighting and power needs, not the building.

The question: These two services need to be grounded separately, but do these two grounding systems need to be bonded together?

Thanks
 
This is a tricky one. If these really are to be considered two services to the same building, then you can not install these two services to that one building. 230.2 says a building can only have one service, except in certain circumstances that do not include this present situation.

On the other hand, if you physically mount service equipment to the outside of a building, and do not run any wires into the interior or along the exterior of that building, and if you do not supply any loads within or attached to the building, then is this really a ?service to that building??

I am inclined to say that the service equipment mounted outside the building is not a service to the building. It is essentially the same as mounting this equipment on a pad (or with other support mechanism) 50 feet away from the building. That tells me that the two grounding electrode systems need not be bonded to each other. This is the same situation as having two houses separated by some amount of side yard; their grounding electrode systems are not bonded to each other.

That said, I see no danger, and no code violation, if you did choose to bond the systems together. I would call it an ?acceptable, but not required? installation choice.
 
Do you really have two services? The "service" is the point of attachment from the power company, not the meter or the panel. I suspect that you may actually only have one "service".
 
I'll clarify the situation.

The "two separate electrical services running to a building" means geographically, they are very each other. One service is for the TI, the other is for the resort site lighting and power. There are two sets of feeders from the utility transformer, two meters, two panels.
 
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