Receptacle on Industrial wiring application

[mfrasier1]

Receptacle on Industrial wiring application

I am installing (12) 20A duplex receptacles on an assembly table for an
industrial manufacturing environment. Can I put them all on one circuit
breaker? What size circuit breaker would you recommend? The customer asked
me to use 10AWG wire so he could add more receptacles later, does that make
sense?

 

[ron]

Re: Receptacle on Industrial wiring application

Re: Receptacle on Industrial wiring application

How many more than 12 will be added?
Check 220.3(B)(9)

 

[petersonra]

Re: Receptacle on Industrial wiring application

Re: Receptacle on Industrial wiring application

and how would larger wire allow you to add more outlets later?

if you ran it as a multiwire circuit you could certainly add more later on.

[ August 19, 2005, 10:07 AM: Message edited by: petersonra ]

 

[mfrasier1]

Re: Receptacle on Industrial wiring application

Re: Receptacle on Industrial wiring application

Ron, There was no indication of how many would be added later. Based on 220.3(B)(9) there can be 13 20A receptacles on one circuit. It seems that, as Bob suggested, a multi-wire circuit will need to be used if there will be more than 13 receptacles. No matter what, it doesn't seem as though just using bigger wire, would help at all.
With 12 or 13 receptacles on one circuit, What would be the largest circuit breaker I should use? I've seen a 20A CB used on many circuits with multiple 15A receptacles. What about a multiple 20A receptacle circuit?
Mike

 

[LarryFine]

Re: Receptacle on Industrial wiring application

Re: Receptacle on Industrial wiring application

Mike, the larger wire size would only be beneficial for an extra-long home run to the panel. A circuit's ampacity is limited by the use of a (properly-sized) breaker.

What matters here is how many receptacles are likely to be used simultaneously, and the load on each. If only one person is likely to work at a time, one circuit is plenty.

If, on the other hand, it is likely that several will be used, the receptacles should be split onto several circuits, so no one circuit is loaded near capacity. There's no one answer without knowing the loads, including quantity.

In the extreme, every receptcale could require a dedicated circuit. The best bet, as indicated above, is to run a multi-wire circuit; two for single phase, three for 3-phase. This would be better than wasting money on #10 wire.