Voltage Drop/Wire Sizing

[Zac1816]

Hi everyone,

I'm running a power distro for a theater production and my feeder cable coming into the distro is a single conductor 4awg. The distro is single phase at 120 volts. If the cable coming from inputs on the distro into the load center on the distro is 4awg but the cable coming to the inputs is 2awg will that change the voltage drop calculations. I've learned the whole water pipe idea. I guess my question is if i start off with a larger gauge wire and end with a slightly smaller gauge wire will that hurt the voltage drop?

Thanks

Zac

 

[iwire]

No a few feet of smaller cable is not a problem and is quite common.

Consider lighting in a large parking lot, the conductors from the panel to each pole are often quite large for voltage drop reasons but the conductors up the poles are much smaller.

 

[Zac1816]

What if the cable coming out of the panel is smaller and then tied into a bigger cable and then sized down again?

 

[Dennis Alwon]

What if the cable coming out of the panel is smaller and then tied into a bigger cable and then sized down again?

There is nothing wrong with that as long as the overcurrent protective device is sized to the smaller sized conductor.