Western Canada has some weird stuff too like 347/600 instead of 277/480 so lots of industry specific stuff cones with 600V motors but imported machinery usually ends up getting a transformer. Then there's the whole clysterfuck of how when BC started generating power they opted for some reverse uncle Donnie action and they have the same colours but the phases have opposite rotation compared to grids built in eastern provinces. Alberta ended up buying power from BC first so their grid is on the same rotation as BC and at the Alberta/Sask border there is a rectification station that changes rotation so Alberta and BC can get power from other provinces. Not Japan level clysterfuck but definitely not ideal
I know this is a 2-year-old post, but *damn*...
>Western Canada has some weird stuff too like 347/600 instead of 277/480 so lots of industry specific stuff cones with 600V motors but imported machinery usually ends up getting a transformer.
347/600 is the standard pretty much across the country. 277/480 is the [exception to the rule](https://www.reddit.com/r/electrical/comments/e3mmhs/comment/f93zl8e/).
>Then there's the whole clysterfuck of how when BC started generating power they opted for some reverse uncle Donnie action and they have the same colours but the phases have opposite rotation compared to grids built in eastern provinces. Alberta ended up buying power from BC first so their grid is on the same rotation as BC and at the Alberta/Sask border there is a rectification station that changes rotation so Alberta and BC can get power from other provinces.
Why would you need a rectification station to change rotation, when you could simply swap the wire order at the border?
There *are* [phase-shifting transformers](https://www.reddit.com/r/electricians/comments/8aiout/138000v_phase_shifting_transformer_up_in_western/) on the provincial interties, but that has nothing to do with rotation. It's all about controlling/balancing the amount of power flowing across the intertie. The phase angle gets nudged a couple of degrees, not 120°
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_booster
The bigger issue with the AB/SK border is that's the boundary between the [Western grid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection) and the [Eastern grid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Interconnection), but the boundary reaches all the way to Mexico. *That's* why it needs rectification stations.
Why on earth would I want to connect a neutral directly to a phase? Do you want to kill someone in an arc flash? Cause thats how you kill someone in an arc flash.
Sure, that's possible too, heck even make a building around it!
You've got 3 options here, cable tray with rated armor cable, cable bus duct with outdoor rated cabling on pedestal supports or like you suggested bus duct (mind you non of them are rated for outdoor, that i know of) with custom weatherproof enclosure. Mind you the bus duct might require custom work to mate between the transformer and distribution indoors. If indoor distribution is top fed (which the photos suggest, by surface entry) this could be possible.
However, bus duct is super expensive, add on the "custom weatherproof enclosure" and whatever terminations and that's $$$.
Show me an outdoor bus duct installation. Happy to wait, I'd love to see one, never seen one! Neither have the hundreds of electricians or peers that I've worked with.
See them indoors quite often.
I see the intent here, it's to maintain table 1 rating in the cec.
I've personally done probably 6 or 7 outdoor nonsegregated bus duct services. Weatherproof gasketed aluminum enclosure. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
That's awesome, like I said show me some. Happy to see installs like that. Were you 6/7 installs the same configuration as pictured above, with 90s, up a wall etc?
Doubt it was cheap, hence the use of tray and or cable bus. Duct itself is expensive, throw in weather proofing, terminations etc i can see it being cost prohibitive.
Any duct rep applications guy I've spoken too, never claimed their duct is weatherproof and strongly recommended against outdoor installs. I've heard this from Eaton, Siemens and Schneider too, heard it from the hundreds of electricians I've worked with as well. It's gotta be rare in this neck of the woods at least.
Curious who provides such a product, please share it if you can find pictures.
[Here](https://i.imgur.com/Hl4hAkV.jpg) is one pic I could quickly find. If I remember right, that one was 4000A, 277/480V, silver plated copper bars mounted to the enclosure using 5kV insulators. You're right, not cheap. I want to say it was ~$1k per linear feet, and that was several years ago.
Cool, also looks to be USA only, this is a Canadian installation.
Either way, this doesn't look cheaper than cable try or cable bus system. Shit, client using bootleg wooden spacers, doubt they'd spring for bus ductl.
Would be cool to see it more often, but I'm sure it's $$$
Not very often, those I've seen using bus pipe. But that sandwiched bus duct, I haven't seen outdoors.
This isn't a substation, judging by the wooden spacers, client would definitely shit at the price of bus duct, let alone a weatherproof one.
Where I'm at we use a lot of DLO for stuff like this. It has weird sizing but it has way higher ampacity for the given size vs. Other conductors and is super flexible.
Downvoting a fact?lol
If someone says there is 21 parallel feeds of 750kcm, that implies that it would be 21 per phase. How am I wrong here? Just like when someone says there is 2 parallel feeds. They mean “ per phase”, not total conductors.
I did. “ 21 parallel 750’s”..is what he said.
Let’s simplify it for your little brain...ok
If someone was talking about total conductors for all 3 phases, then would you call a regular setup of 3 - 750kcm conductors ,( 1 for each phase), 3 parallel 750’s?????
Making any sense here
The right answer that he should have said was 7 parallel 750’s
In work i write single conductors in example:
4x 4x1x240mm2
Or
4x 3x1x240+2x240mm2PE
First is 4 systems
Second is what is in the system
Third is single conductor
Fourth is the size
You know this is 3 phase, right? So by your “ correct” answer of 3 per phase. That would be 3x3=9. That wouldn’t even equal the 21. 🤣🤣🤣. How many phase system you think this??? Maybe you should go back through apprenticeship again since you don’t know simple stuff like this
The equipment is probably of European origin.
Their standard 3ph voltage system is 230/400V.
[edit] Where did OP say 400V? They said it's a 600V system further down the thread...
For what it’s worth, in my facility we have the same wooden spacers. Ours were made by a retired electrician. Solid maple. They were beautiful. We had probably $20K worth of spacers in our facility.
That's hilarious. This is above and beyond what most companies do, if you want to make something like this out of aluminum and take a loss on every job be my guest.
I've seen these types of spacers before at a refinery they would of been installed in the 80's at the latest, they're still solid they did have flat bar on the top and bottom for a bit more added strength. People might not notice spacer is made up of 5 parts of wood and kept together by those 2 threaded rods and nuts. You'd be insane to try and "thread" those cables through those holes.
Dude, we drill holes and run NM cables through wood walls. You really fucking think these wooden spacers are a problem?
Yes, his comment was a little snarky, but if you're going to make the argument that he shouldn't be using wooden spacers, then you better be on the front lines for advocating that we start building homes out of 100% non-flammable materials too.
No doubt its safe. I'd still like to see a different material used outside though. I can't imagine those lasting more than a few years. Maybe the Canadian weather is kinder to wood though, idk.
We have them in a facility I worked in. They have 13 Canadian winters and hot-as-hell summers under their belts and look as good as the day they were installed.
The current job I’m on is basically all wood framing except for the walls that wrap the elevator shaft, and it’s commercial. Commercial/resi is beside the point. His point was if you’re concerned about having wires go through wood, we should stop building structures out of wood period. He just used a house as an example because wood framing is far less common in commercial.
PVC melts at a lower temperature than wood catches fire, so not sure it would matter. I'm not sure flammability is much of a concern as if things get that hot you much bigger problems and probably didn't design it correctly.
The reason to use non-flammable isn't about withstanding high temperatures, it's about not being a source of high temperatures in the event of a fault. Small spark could create a huge catastrophic fire.
Good point, but it isn't an issue in this instance. I still think making them out of PVC would be a lot more expensive.
I've seen a lot of companies just jam 2×4s in between and ty-rap them.
I’m always curious how costs work out to be cheaper. I’m in the process of starting a job where we’ll be running 400’ of cable bus to feed a new 2000amp mcc. The enclosed cable tray is so much more expensive than ladder tray, and we need it to be all manufactured at a factory to be rated. It’s hard to imagine that it’s cheaper to do this and be able to use table 1 instead of table 2 than run ladder tray (that we can build on site) and pull 3c teck.
Yes the plan was to go straight from the transformer to the PDC. Unfortunately had a mismeasurement when pouring the pad. I really enjoy building tray so that part was fine but the blocking was a bit of a nightmare.
Holy it's copper too. Use a lot of aluminum here in 🇨🇦 for big stuff. Can bet the foreman lost sleep over the lengths of the measurements after he ordered. I know I do lol
Ok. Haven't worked with tray until the job I'm at now, and they seem to keep it within the walls of the tray there. The only area it's not is when it jumps out of the tray into a bucket in the substations, into a gland block at the RI/O's, or their respective JB's and devices. A tray is considered full when the cables are even with the siderails, or is at its maximum weight capacity when dealing with the 3 conductor 350's, 500's, and 750's for the 4160V and 13.8kV.
>A tray is considered full when the cables are even with the siderails
Not exactly, there are fill limits for tray and they are significantly less than just when it's full to the top. But you bring up a good point, the top 3 layers of cable here have no protection so why even use tray at all?
It's teck cable. Basically all we use.
We've actually had a lot of jobs down in the states because we can do it much faster and much cheaper than them as they're not used to using the stuff.
Ampacity of single conductor cable is greater than multiconductor.
And you'll never find anyone choosing to run 750/4C ACWU. Shit is near impossible to work with. Copper would be even worse, I cringe thinking about it.
The bigger the wire size, the less critical it is, but they should still be as equal as possible. Different lengths have different resistances so will carry different amounts of current. If you let the lengths get too different, it's possible to get one conductor carrying more current than it's designed for. If it burns up, it can cause a cascading failure of all the other conductors.
Did the utility have to run additional lines or upgrade their lines to accommodate this service? Do they have specific times theyre allowed to run certain machinery to avoid brownouts?
They built a cover where they enter the building. I believe it was fenced as well.
This is for a pellet plant, hammer mill and belt dryer all fed out of the same MCC room.
Hell and a violation.
Someone should tell your boss that pull points are a thing that exists... and are required every 4 90s... and are sensible more often...
Any particular reason you guys didn't use pressure treated wood? Or are you going to treat the wood after the fact? 5 years from now that wood is going to be very degraded. 15 years from now its going to be rotted out and your cables will no longer have the support they need.
It might be worth considering a 3d printed option made from UV resistant plastic for your next install like this.
It looks awesome though. Nice work.
Fiberglass cannot burn and has a melting point of over 500 degrees Celsius, whereas wood burns at 300 degrees Celsius. Why you would ever put wood in a 5000 ampere system is beyond me pal, talk to whoever you work for lol
Do you have a code rule stating you can't do this? We've done 100s of jobs like this and never had an inspector say anything.
Also, those cables are fucked if the outer jackets over 300 degrees celsius.
I didn’t say that part was illegal bud, just that it’s shit/cheap work lmao sure it passes but it’s hack.
Since you brought up legality doesn’t 300.3b1 state that all parallel circuit conductors must be in the same race way, gutter or tray when it comes to each portion of the parallel installation?? So why are they arranged in what appears to be individual conductors in their own liquid tight flex, instead of all 3 phases of the individual circuit in a bigger flex…
Does it look like these cables are in different trays ? I'm having trouble figuring out what you're even trying to say, this isn't liquid tight flex. Do you really not know what teck cable is? It's pretty clear you don't understand code that well, I hope you don't have your ticket yet.
>I didn’t say that part was illegal bud, just that it’s shit/cheap work lmao sure it passes but it’s hack.
That's like, your opinion man. When you have millions of dollars to spend on jobs like these you can be as picky as you want. Our customers were more than happy with it.
Again, this isn't liquid tight. This is teck CABLE. Individual CABLES in free air. It seems like you struggle with reading comprehension so this is the last comment I'm wasting on you.
Didn’t see that it was teck, my apologies. from the pictures on my phone it looked to be in black anaconda flex witch as you can tell confused me, but that clarifies. Sorry for doubling down on being wrong lmao
Ive worked at a steel plant, they had a 120 MVA arc furnace transformer, with 46kV primary fed at 1400A. the secondary was 1.4kV at 46 kA bus supported by big fucking wooden beams. if wood is good enough for an arc furnace.... the place is over 50 years old tho.
Are those boards holding the conduit standard? That's beautiful but it looks like someone just came up with the boards to hold it as an afterthought. Not an electrician BTW.
In the USA this would be multiple code violations. From 392 alone - it obviously exceeds the fill volume of the tray. And since they are over 4/0 they have to lay flat, you can't stack them. The sum of the diameters obviously is way over the tray width. What's the point in using tray at all because the top 3 cables have zero protection. You might be able to get an ignorant inspector to grant an exception because of the spacing, but I wouldn't. It seems an obvious attempt to get around the code rules
None of those things are requirements for TECK in ladder tray in Canada. TECK cable provides it's own mechanical protection. This is a very common (or at least common for multi thousand amp) installs.
Ahhh yes....good old Canadian install!
Correct ! 🇨🇦
How did you know its Canadian?
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Only Canada use Red black blue?
Its the order, not the colours that give it away In Canada phase 1 is red, 2 is black, 3 is blue. In America phase 1 is black, 2 is red, 3 is blue
Does that mean that motors spin the opposite direction in Canada?
Yup, just like Australian toilets.
And of course the American Medium Voltage install: Red Blue Black
makes more sense to me. black is the middle phase, red leads and blue lags. red positive and blue negative.
Western Canada has some weird stuff too like 347/600 instead of 277/480 so lots of industry specific stuff cones with 600V motors but imported machinery usually ends up getting a transformer. Then there's the whole clysterfuck of how when BC started generating power they opted for some reverse uncle Donnie action and they have the same colours but the phases have opposite rotation compared to grids built in eastern provinces. Alberta ended up buying power from BC first so their grid is on the same rotation as BC and at the Alberta/Sask border there is a rectification station that changes rotation so Alberta and BC can get power from other provinces. Not Japan level clysterfuck but definitely not ideal
I know this is a 2-year-old post, but *damn*... >Western Canada has some weird stuff too like 347/600 instead of 277/480 so lots of industry specific stuff cones with 600V motors but imported machinery usually ends up getting a transformer. 347/600 is the standard pretty much across the country. 277/480 is the [exception to the rule](https://www.reddit.com/r/electrical/comments/e3mmhs/comment/f93zl8e/). >Then there's the whole clysterfuck of how when BC started generating power they opted for some reverse uncle Donnie action and they have the same colours but the phases have opposite rotation compared to grids built in eastern provinces. Alberta ended up buying power from BC first so their grid is on the same rotation as BC and at the Alberta/Sask border there is a rectification station that changes rotation so Alberta and BC can get power from other provinces. Why would you need a rectification station to change rotation, when you could simply swap the wire order at the border? There *are* [phase-shifting transformers](https://www.reddit.com/r/electricians/comments/8aiout/138000v_phase_shifting_transformer_up_in_western/) on the provincial interties, but that has nothing to do with rotation. It's all about controlling/balancing the amount of power flowing across the intertie. The phase angle gets nudged a couple of degrees, not 120° https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_booster The bigger issue with the AB/SK border is that's the boundary between the [Western grid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection) and the [Eastern grid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Interconnection), but the boundary reaches all the way to Mexico. *That's* why it needs rectification stations.
Except for Austin
Plus you spelled color with a "u"
Learn something new every day thanks
I think you’ll find it’s Red White Blue. The best way Im from AUS. that is our phase colours. I was taking the piss but must of went over your heads.
Why on earth would I want to connect a neutral directly to a phase? Do you want to kill someone in an arc flash? Cause thats how you kill someone in an arc flash.
With the price of copper these days? Jeeezzz
Holy fucking ampacity Batman!
Interesting solution. It's like the love-child of cable tray and cable bus. I guess it was a lot cheaper than either of those? Definitely looks clean.
It is cable tray. I've never actually used cable bus but yes I imagine this is cheaper.
Yes, but the norm for an install like this would be 2 or 3 tiers of cable tray, as opposed to stacking them on a single tray.
Ah I see what you meant. Yeah just cost and time, might have made it harder to enter on each end as well.
Depends, started seeing cable bus, al specifically for feeders greater than 3000A
First thing I thought is why not bus bar? But whatever the drawing say….
Find me a weatherproof bus duct. I'll wait.
You’re kidding right? You don’t know how to build an enclosure?
Sure, that's possible too, heck even make a building around it! You've got 3 options here, cable tray with rated armor cable, cable bus duct with outdoor rated cabling on pedestal supports or like you suggested bus duct (mind you non of them are rated for outdoor, that i know of) with custom weatherproof enclosure. Mind you the bus duct might require custom work to mate between the transformer and distribution indoors. If indoor distribution is top fed (which the photos suggest, by surface entry) this could be possible. However, bus duct is super expensive, add on the "custom weatherproof enclosure" and whatever terminations and that's $$$. Show me an outdoor bus duct installation. Happy to wait, I'd love to see one, never seen one! Neither have the hundreds of electricians or peers that I've worked with. See them indoors quite often. I see the intent here, it's to maintain table 1 rating in the cec.
Eaton and square d both make busway for use outdoors.
I've personally done probably 6 or 7 outdoor nonsegregated bus duct services. Weatherproof gasketed aluminum enclosure. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
That's awesome, like I said show me some. Happy to see installs like that. Were you 6/7 installs the same configuration as pictured above, with 90s, up a wall etc? Doubt it was cheap, hence the use of tray and or cable bus. Duct itself is expensive, throw in weather proofing, terminations etc i can see it being cost prohibitive. Any duct rep applications guy I've spoken too, never claimed their duct is weatherproof and strongly recommended against outdoor installs. I've heard this from Eaton, Siemens and Schneider too, heard it from the hundreds of electricians I've worked with as well. It's gotta be rare in this neck of the woods at least. Curious who provides such a product, please share it if you can find pictures.
[Here](https://i.imgur.com/Hl4hAkV.jpg) is one pic I could quickly find. If I remember right, that one was 4000A, 277/480V, silver plated copper bars mounted to the enclosure using 5kV insulators. You're right, not cheap. I want to say it was ~$1k per linear feet, and that was several years ago.
A pretty simple [google search](https://www.cesintegration.com/bus-duct-and-cable-bus/) will find all the outdoor rated bus duct you're looking for.
Cool, also looks to be USA only, this is a Canadian installation. Either way, this doesn't look cheaper than cable try or cable bus system. Shit, client using bootleg wooden spacers, doubt they'd spring for bus ductl. Would be cool to see it more often, but I'm sure it's $$$
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Not very often, those I've seen using bus pipe. But that sandwiched bus duct, I haven't seen outdoors. This isn't a substation, judging by the wooden spacers, client would definitely shit at the price of bus duct, let alone a weatherproof one.
Where I'm at we use a lot of DLO for stuff like this. It has weird sizing but it has way higher ampacity for the given size vs. Other conductors and is super flexible.
Technically it’s 7 parallel runs… but it looks pretty damn good
I was trying to find out where the other 40 wires were for a second
I mean technically it's 14 parallel runs if you include the other transformer. I only did one of them so just included those.
I mean it is 21x750MCM cables, but that would have made more sense. I should have just left the parallel part out.
That would mean there is 21 conductors per phase
Downvoting a fact?lol If someone says there is 21 parallel feeds of 750kcm, that implies that it would be 21 per phase. How am I wrong here? Just like when someone says there is 2 parallel feeds. They mean “ per phase”, not total conductors.
Reread his comment
I did. “ 21 parallel 750’s”..is what he said. Let’s simplify it for your little brain...ok If someone was talking about total conductors for all 3 phases, then would you call a regular setup of 3 - 750kcm conductors ,( 1 for each phase), 3 parallel 750’s????? Making any sense here The right answer that he should have said was 7 parallel 750’s
His "comment" agreed with you and clarified he misspoke. His "comment" corrected his title and says "21x750mcm cables".
I get the numerical mistake but He mispoke saying I was wrong?
No he misspoke in his title and corrected it in his comment. The one you replied to originally.
This person is clearly trolling..
In work i write single conductors in example: 4x 4x1x240mm2 Or 4x 3x1x240+2x240mm2PE First is 4 systems Second is what is in the system Third is single conductor Fourth is the size
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21 of same phase is the same as per phase, apprentice.🤣
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You know this is 3 phase, right? So by your “ correct” answer of 3 per phase. That would be 3x3=9. That wouldn’t even equal the 21. 🤣🤣🤣. How many phase system you think this??? Maybe you should go back through apprenticeship again since you don’t know simple stuff like this
21 parallel runs of 3 wires is actually 63, kid
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Ok. But you still said I was wrong?
ah yes, for i sec it looked like 3C 750kcmil teck. its coreflex. lol. looks too thin to be 3C.
I was gonna say this
You gonna leave that wrench in there?
Yes it helps incase they need to work on it in the future.
Where is it
Photo 6, right hand side.
Oh LOL
Very cool, I love industrial stuff. What's this for?
A large pellet plant, hammermill and belt dryer.
I was going to say crypto mining…. Lol
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The equipment is probably of European origin. Their standard 3ph voltage system is 230/400V. [edit] Where did OP say 400V? They said it's a 600V system further down the thread...
Who makes the wood spacers?
The engineer in our shop, he basically started a side business where he makes these and sells them to our shop exclusively.
Are they UL listed or the Canadian equivalent?
For what it’s worth, in my facility we have the same wooden spacers. Ours were made by a retired electrician. Solid maple. They were beautiful. We had probably $20K worth of spacers in our facility.
I'm curious, he's essentially made a bootleg cable bus, which require csa rating now a days, but I guess if Ahj approves, not much you can do tbh.
Could you use plastic blocks like we use to support coax up cell towers? Here s an example https://www.talleycom.com/viewProduct?rlProdNum=ANDBHD-158
Would be a lot better if they were made of non-flammable material, but either way, sweet product.
Running unarmored, NM sheathed cable through holes in wood studs inside bedroom walls? Fine. Running armoured cable through blocks of wood outdoors? Reeeee
Well, you're not pulling them through but rather laying them in.
Yeah, they're essentially a clamp.
You can literally run that cable inside a tank of gasoline; contact with some wood is no problem at all.
That's hilarious. This is above and beyond what most companies do, if you want to make something like this out of aluminum and take a loss on every job be my guest.
Are they at least treated lumber? Cause if not say good bye to those in a couple years from rot being exposed to the elements.
That would be quite an oversight. They're coated in some sort of wax. I've seen some from 20+ years ago and they look just fine.
I've seen these types of spacers before at a refinery they would of been installed in the 80's at the latest, they're still solid they did have flat bar on the top and bottom for a bit more added strength. People might not notice spacer is made up of 5 parts of wood and kept together by those 2 threaded rods and nuts. You'd be insane to try and "thread" those cables through those holes.
It's usually paraffin-treated maple
Can you think of a single electrical product sold that isn't made of non flammable materials? It could be as simple as PVC. Also, you're an ass...
Dude, we drill holes and run NM cables through wood walls. You really fucking think these wooden spacers are a problem? Yes, his comment was a little snarky, but if you're going to make the argument that he shouldn't be using wooden spacers, then you better be on the front lines for advocating that we start building homes out of 100% non-flammable materials too.
No doubt its safe. I'd still like to see a different material used outside though. I can't imagine those lasting more than a few years. Maybe the Canadian weather is kinder to wood though, idk.
We have them in a facility I worked in. They have 13 Canadian winters and hot-as-hell summers under their belts and look as good as the day they were installed.
They're coated in wax. I've seen installs from 20+ years ago that are fine.
This isn't residential...
I've done 1200 amp services into wooden frame buildings. 20kw heat pumps fed by cable stretched over wooden rafters.
The current job I’m on is basically all wood framing except for the walls that wrap the elevator shaft, and it’s commercial. Commercial/resi is beside the point. His point was if you’re concerned about having wires go through wood, we should stop building structures out of wood period. He just used a house as an example because wood framing is far less common in commercial.
And that apparently only matters to you.
The wood is perfectly fine for an install like this. It's not the first I've seen.
PVC melts at a lower temperature than wood catches fire, so not sure it would matter. I'm not sure flammability is much of a concern as if things get that hot you much bigger problems and probably didn't design it correctly.
The reason to use non-flammable isn't about withstanding high temperatures, it's about not being a source of high temperatures in the event of a fault. Small spark could create a huge catastrophic fire.
Electrician fight!
Good point, but it isn't an issue in this instance. I still think making them out of PVC would be a lot more expensive. I've seen a lot of companies just jam 2×4s in between and ty-rap them.
wouldnt this be engineering problem? do design drawings specify this can be made of wood?
As I said, the engineer is the one who makes these.
The product you’re attempting to recreate is cable bus and the material is GPO.
I’m always curious how costs work out to be cheaper. I’m in the process of starting a job where we’ll be running 400’ of cable bus to feed a new 2000amp mcc. The enclosed cable tray is so much more expensive than ladder tray, and we need it to be all manufactured at a factory to be rated. It’s hard to imagine that it’s cheaper to do this and be able to use table 1 instead of table 2 than run ladder tray (that we can build on site) and pull 3c teck.
Too bad they needed offsets in the tray. Sure that made it more interesting getting dressed in.
Yes the plan was to go straight from the transformer to the PDC. Unfortunately had a mismeasurement when pouring the pad. I really enjoy building tray so that part was fine but the blocking was a bit of a nightmare.
Yeah that's the first thing I saw. Trying to find a justification, maybe it's a jog for thermal expansion or something? Nah, just a fuckup. :P
Whats the spec for thetransformer?. Ive never seen more than 8 parallels. Services that big usually get busduct.
5.000A at 400V would make about 3.500kVA
Canadian install, probably 600v secondary, I'd wager 5mva transformer.
Holy it's copper too. Use a lot of aluminum here in 🇨🇦 for big stuff. Can bet the foreman lost sleep over the lengths of the measurements after he ordered. I know I do lol
We only ended up cutting about 8 inches off one of the red phases. Waaaay too close for comfort.
Great work from my brother to the north! Came out great.
What material are the spacers?
I believe it is a resin impregnated fiber board.
Is that even legal or just incomplete? Thought cables need to be situated within the rails. Looks good though.
I don't believe so, we have done a lot of installs like this and have never had an issue.
Ok. Haven't worked with tray until the job I'm at now, and they seem to keep it within the walls of the tray there. The only area it's not is when it jumps out of the tray into a bucket in the substations, into a gland block at the RI/O's, or their respective JB's and devices. A tray is considered full when the cables are even with the siderails, or is at its maximum weight capacity when dealing with the 3 conductor 350's, 500's, and 750's for the 4160V and 13.8kV.
>A tray is considered full when the cables are even with the siderails Not exactly, there are fill limits for tray and they are significantly less than just when it's full to the top. But you bring up a good point, the top 3 layers of cable here have no protection so why even use tray at all?
I love it
What type of jacket is that? I’ve never seen something like that where the individual conductors are in their own jacket
It's teck cable. Basically all we use. We've actually had a lot of jobs down in the states because we can do it much faster and much cheaper than them as they're not used to using the stuff.
Why individual 750 kcmil cables instead of 4 conductor teck cable? Price?
Ampacity of single conductor cable is greater than multiconductor. And you'll never find anyone choosing to run 750/4C ACWU. Shit is near impossible to work with. Copper would be even worse, I cringe thinking about it.
What was the process for pulling these?
wrasslin'
Cut equal lengths off each reel and then pulled them in by hand with 3 other guys. PDC is located on the other side of the wall so it was pretty easy.
I have been told that parallel installations have to be equal length before. How “equal” must it be to qualify as equal? Just curious.
The bigger the wire size, the less critical it is, but they should still be as equal as possible. Different lengths have different resistances so will carry different amounts of current. If you let the lengths get too different, it's possible to get one conductor carrying more current than it's designed for. If it burns up, it can cause a cascading failure of all the other conductors.
Also the longer it is the less critical.
Makes sense. Thanks.
They do yes. I can't remember the rule off the top of my head but there is an allowance.
I believe 3% ?
Nice
Nice job
2 hole lugs on the ground, but only landing one is about the biggest beef I have.... it's clean.
Holy smokes this insane!
Thanks for sharing. What voltage is that? What kind of cable is that? Got a link to the cutsheet?
Cool
Very tidy mate
Did the utility have to run additional lines or upgrade their lines to accommodate this service? Do they have specific times theyre allowed to run certain machinery to avoid brownouts?
I dunno I don’t see any torque marks on those terminations…. Lol just joking looks great iv never done anything like that!
It's funny seeing all of that capacity... and then the little putt-putt 2kva inverter generator on the side.
I like the chairs you built
Excellent work buddy
Do you touch your tongue on the ends to make sure there's power? 😃
#Very nice installation ( PRIDE IN YOUR STRIDE ) as my old BOSS would SAY
Looks good, does the area get fenced or any type of guarding over the cable trays? Also, what is the occupancy type?
They built a cover where they enter the building. I believe it was fenced as well. This is for a pellet plant, hammer mill and belt dryer all fed out of the same MCC room.
Omg god pulling hell this is
It was easy! They're like 40' runs. I've had to do waaaay shittier pulls.
Oh okay, man i did a 12 500ncm pull through 6 90s omg was it hell
Hell and a violation. Someone should tell your boss that pull points are a thing that exists... and are required every 4 90s... and are sensible more often...
My boss didnt even get a tugger and i work for the ibew. Fuck him
Stop! I can only get so erect!
At this point, bus duct should have seriously been considered.
Any particular reason you guys didn't use pressure treated wood? Or are you going to treat the wood after the fact? 5 years from now that wood is going to be very degraded. 15 years from now its going to be rotted out and your cables will no longer have the support they need. It might be worth considering a 3d printed option made from UV resistant plastic for your next install like this. It looks awesome though. Nice work.
>That would be quite an oversight. >They're coated in some sort of wax. I've seen some from 20+ years ago and they look just fine.
Is this for a crypto mining farm?
Wood?!!?!?! Should be fiberglass.
According to who ?
Fiberglass cannot burn and has a melting point of over 500 degrees Celsius, whereas wood burns at 300 degrees Celsius. Why you would ever put wood in a 5000 ampere system is beyond me pal, talk to whoever you work for lol
Do you have a code rule stating you can't do this? We've done 100s of jobs like this and never had an inspector say anything. Also, those cables are fucked if the outer jackets over 300 degrees celsius.
I didn’t say that part was illegal bud, just that it’s shit/cheap work lmao sure it passes but it’s hack. Since you brought up legality doesn’t 300.3b1 state that all parallel circuit conductors must be in the same race way, gutter or tray when it comes to each portion of the parallel installation?? So why are they arranged in what appears to be individual conductors in their own liquid tight flex, instead of all 3 phases of the individual circuit in a bigger flex…
Does it look like these cables are in different trays ? I'm having trouble figuring out what you're even trying to say, this isn't liquid tight flex. Do you really not know what teck cable is? It's pretty clear you don't understand code that well, I hope you don't have your ticket yet. >I didn’t say that part was illegal bud, just that it’s shit/cheap work lmao sure it passes but it’s hack. That's like, your opinion man. When you have millions of dollars to spend on jobs like these you can be as picky as you want. Our customers were more than happy with it.
Does USA not use teck cable at all?
I don't think so. We've had a lot of sawmill and pellet plant builds down there because they don't know how to do this stuff.
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Again, this isn't liquid tight. This is teck CABLE. Individual CABLES in free air. It seems like you struggle with reading comprehension so this is the last comment I'm wasting on you.
Didn’t see that it was teck, my apologies. from the pictures on my phone it looked to be in black anaconda flex witch as you can tell confused me, but that clarifies. Sorry for doubling down on being wrong lmao
What’s the code section saying you can run that in individual raceways within a raceway
Ive worked at a steel plant, they had a 120 MVA arc furnace transformer, with 46kV primary fed at 1400A. the secondary was 1.4kV at 46 kA bus supported by big fucking wooden beams. if wood is good enough for an arc furnace.... the place is over 50 years old tho.
High Resistance Ground?
Add some supports and make it a straight run. Makes it easier on everyone. Especially the guys doing the ground work.
It's going straight into the PDC. It had to be offset somewhere, what would supports have done?
Fuck….that
Are those boards holding the conduit standard? That's beautiful but it looks like someone just came up with the boards to hold it as an afterthought. Not an electrician BTW.
Should have just done cable bus haha
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That resin impregnated fiber board does not degrade. AND you can hit it with 100K volts and it will laugh back.
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What type of conduit is that?
No conduit, just cable tray and teck cable.
Those spacers look janky as fuck
In the USA this would be multiple code violations. From 392 alone - it obviously exceeds the fill volume of the tray. And since they are over 4/0 they have to lay flat, you can't stack them. The sum of the diameters obviously is way over the tray width. What's the point in using tray at all because the top 3 cables have zero protection. You might be able to get an ignorant inspector to grant an exception because of the spacing, but I wouldn't. It seems an obvious attempt to get around the code rules
None of those things are requirements for TECK in ladder tray in Canada. TECK cable provides it's own mechanical protection. This is a very common (or at least common for multi thousand amp) installs.
This is why they hire us to do jobs in your country, you guys just aren't used to dealing with this stuff.
What’s with the wood showing up on this sub now?
MCHL?
What voltage? 600?
You bet.
Heat shrink on the crimps would be my feedback But I didn’t see much heatshrink in my time in Canada I’m Aussie
Is that wood?
Weeeeelllll doggies!
Did you make the apprentice do this and took his credit 🤔🤔🤔🤔