I need to run power from my house out to my 35X70 workshop out back. What I have; a dedicated panel with 150 amp breaker on the side of my house that is currently only powering my well. My workshop is 275 ft. away. I intend on putting a 100 amp sub-panel in the shop. I have most of the 2” conduit ran in a trench from my house to the workshop. I intend on having a welder, compressor, wall unit a/c in a small office, lights and maybe an outside outlet to hook up for a travel trailer. I want to use copper wiring. What main wiring is recommended to run inside the conduit from the 150 amp/panel on the house to the 100 amp sub-panel in the workshop?
Electrical – What size wire for a 100A sub-panel at 275 feet
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Related Solutions
First, are you sure that 30A is a sufficiently large breaker for your range circuit? Most electric cooking appliances (freestanding electric ranges, cooktop/oven combinations) require a 40A or a 50A circuit.
The 20A breakers do sound correct for the lighting and receptacle circuits, although you will need more of them, as every dwelling unit must have at least two dedicated 20A small appliance branch circuits and a 20A bathroom receptacle branch circuit; if laundry facilities are present, yet another dedicated 20A branch circuit must be provided for the laundry room outlets. You will want to use a double-pole breaker for HVAC, though: all but the very smallest HVAC appliances require a 240V circuit, and this includes packaged terminal units, even though they only draw a relatively small amount of current (<20A) compared to a conventional air conditioner.
The overall capacity of the subpanel you have on hand (100A) is more than adequate for an apartment-type dwelling unit; however, you will want to check the number of breaker slots available to you in it -- full-width slots are at a premium these days due to AFCI requirements, which makes depending on tandem breakers to fit all your circuits into your panel quite unwise.
Your #2 wire will be adequate for the feeder conductors provided it is copper and of a 75°C rated or better insulation type (such as ordinary THHN/THWN). If you are using aluminum wire, I would upsize to 1AWG -- 2AWG aluminum is marginal for 100A service, requring 90°C rated insulation in order to be at all usable in such an application.
Base Conductor Size
Start out by using Table 310.15(B)(16), and applying any required corrections, to determine what size conductors you'll need. For your situation, we'll assume we can use the 75°C column, that you want to use copper conductors, and there's no other corrections required. So in your case, if you want to install a 50 ampere panel, you'll need at least 8 AWG copper conductors. If you want a 60 ampere panel, you'll need 6 AWG copper conductors.
Voltage Drop
Once you have the base conductor size selected, you'll want to calculate the voltage drop across that size conductors for the length of the feeders. The first step here will be to use Table 8 from chapter 9 of the NEC, to determine the resistance of the conductors you've selected.
In your case, 8 AWG stranded copper wire has a resistance of 0.778 ohms per 1000 ft. 6 AWG stranded copper wire has a resistance of 0.491 ohms per 1000 ft.
Next you'll use the following formula, to calculate the voltage drop across the feeders.
V = L * 2 * R * A
Where:
- V = Voltage Drop
- L = Distance along the wire from one breaker to the next.
- R = Resistance per foot of wire.
- A = Current running through the conductor.
For a 50 ampere circuit, 130 ft. long, using 8 AWG stranded copper conductors, the calculation looks like this...
V = 130' * 2 * 0.000778 * 50 A
V = 260 * 0.000778 * 50 A
V = 0.20228 * 50 A
V = 10.114 V
10.114 V is 4.2% of 240 V. The NEC recommends having a voltage drop less than 3%. To achieve this, you're going to have to use larger conductors.
6 AWG stranded copper conductors have a resistance of 0.000491 ohms per foot, which means the voltage drop would only be 6.383 volts or 2.7%.
For a 60 ampere circuit 130' long, 6 AWG stranded copper conductors would have a voltage drop of 7.6596 volts or 3.2%. While 4 AWG stranded copper would be 4.8048 volts, or 2%.
Conductor Type
Once you know what size conductors you need, you'll have to determine what type of insulation the conductors should have. Since you're burying the conduit, you'll need a wire rated for wet locations. The popular choice in this situation, would be to use THWN wires.
Wire Size
Now that you know what size conductors, and what type of wires you'll use. Then next step is to determine the physical size of the wires, and how much space they'll take up in conduit. For this, you can use Table 5 from chapter 9 of the NEC. There you'll find that 6 AWG THWN wires have an area of 0.0507 square inches, while 4 AWG THWN wires have and area of 0.0824 square inches.
Conduit Fill
Using the size of one wire, you can figure out the area required for all four wires.
0.0507 * 4 = 0.2028 in.sq.
0.0824 * 4 = 0.3296 in.sq.
Use Table 1 from chapter 9 of the NEC, to determine the allowable conduit fill percent. Since you'll have more than 2 conductors, you can fill the conduit to 40%.
Conduit Type
If you know what type of conduit you're using, you can use Table 4 from chapter 9 of the NEC to look up the area fill values for various sizes of conduit.
Conduit Size
Since you've decided to use Schedule 80 PVC, you'll simply find that table in Table 4. Then look down the 40% fill column, until you find an area large enough for all your wires.
In your case four 6 AWG THWN conductors, will require 1" Schedule 80 PVC. While four 4 AWG THWN conductors, will require 1 1/4" Schedule 80 PVC.
Conduit Size Alt.
If you don't feel like calculating wire/conduit area, and all the wires are the same size, you could use Table C.9 from Annex C of the NEC to look up the conduit size required. There you'll find that you can fit five 6 AWG THWN wires throug 1" Schedule 80 PVC, and that you can fit six 4 AWG THWN wires though 1 1/4" Schedule 80 PVC.
tl;dr
- For 130' long 50 ampere feeder, use four 6 AWG stranded copper THWN conductors though 1" Schedule 80 PVC.
- For 130' long 60 ampere feeder, use four 4 AWG stranded copper THWN conductors through 1 1/4" Schedule 80 PVC.
NOTES:
- This answer contains some of the tables used in this answer.
- If you don't feel like doing any maths, you can surely find a calculator online to do all the work for you.
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Best Answer
I use Southwire's wire size calculator.
At that length aluminum feeder would be much cheaper, selective boxes for; feet, single (phase), aluminum, direct burial/conduit/overhead, minimum conductor size, input 275 (for the length), input 240v for the voltage, max voltage drop leave at 3 (but we will play with this), current at end (since you don’t know guess at 80), input 1 for parallel sets.
This came up for 2/0 with a standard 3%. Input in 5 in the % and the wire size drops to 1 awg with a 4.44% voltage drop
In the US the National Electric Code there are suggestions of 3% and 5% for voltage drop but these are only suggestions.
If you actually used 80 amps of 240v then the drop would be 10.6v with 1awg or #1 wire not a problem.
if you are drawing 50 amps 240v on the #1 wire the voltage drop would be only 6.6volts (got that by playing with the amperage and % voltage drop).
Only during really heavy loading of your circuit would #1 aluminum have a voltage drop that was at the max recommended by the NEC and it never exceeds 5% up to 80 amps.
Going to a larger feeder breaker 90 or 100 requires a larger wire size but I doubt you will need that much power.
I would get the 150 amp panel with more circuits you can feed it with anything below 150 as long as the wire size matches the feeder wire requirements.