Lineman question

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speedypetey

Senior Member
Location
Hudson Valley, NY
I have question from another contractor's message board.
This is a bit of a disagreement I am having with a new member over there. I will post his question trying to resolve his side of the argument.
It is not mentioned, but this is for an underground secondary service.
Remember, this is NOT my question:

What size wire would a lineman use to connect a house with a 200 amp service that is 650 feet away from the transformer?
Does the lineman ask the home owner what type of appliances the customer has in their house, so that the lineman can do load calculations?
Or is there a rule of thumb?
Click to expand...
 
I agree that linemen shouldn't often be put in that position, but here in southern New Mexico there are co-ops and municipalities without engineers to call on a daily basis.

The wire size is very much related to what loads are in the house. If there is refrigerated air, if it is all electric, etc., you might not be able to run that far. Anyone sizing service wire would need to ask the question.

If you assume 80 amps of actual load, 250 KCMIL aluminum will give about 4% voltage drop. The standard for most utilities is 5% in their entire secondary system.

80 amps isn't much load, and if you go to much over 100 amps of assumed actual load, you will want to extend primary.

Jim T
 
i helped a friend trim out a house that he wired.
it had a 200 amp, underground service.

the 25kva transformer was mounted up on a pole, over 500 feet away.
the utility contractor pulled in either 1/0 or 2/0 Aluminum wire to feed this service

the utility told the home owner when he had this home built that he couldnt use over such and such size of HVAC system

basically, the utility is limiting the load on the house so that they wouldnt have to set another pole and transformer, or pull larger wire

sounds like a bunch of CRAP to me!
 
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