Electrical – Will a 15 amp circuit support the lighting I plan to install

electrical

I am in the middle of a basement finishing project and have a question.

I have three circuits for my basement, 2 15 amp and 1 20 amp. I'd like to use one 15 amp for all lights, one 15 amp for eight outlets in the finished part, and one 20 amp for outlets in the shop. For the lights, I came up with the following based on research.

One 15 amp circuit can support 1800 watts, after reading a little, electricians plan for 80% load, so 1440 watts. The new energy efficient lights out there are only 14 watts so I could have up to 102 lights? Way more than I'd need down there.

Are there any issues with this plan? Any code concerns? Thanks.

Best Answer

It looks like you have spent some time and research working on this, well done. We calculate general purpose outlet for dwelling units at 180 W/VA or 1.5A per duplex receptacle. If you have an NEC handbook illustration 220.4 is a great example.

The lighting is a bit of guess work and since we already know the outlets it would be safe to use 1.5 W/VA per square foot of living area to determine the load. Understand that the NEC isn't interested in what you are installing, it's interested in what may be installed by whomever at a later date.

That being said. I don't really see a problem with your thinking, but I do have one question. Are any of these receptacles being used for a specific duty such as a refrigerator or microwave or such. If so they must be calculated at the nameplate rating rather than the general purpose 180W.

My final thought is why not just run all 20 amp circuits and that would insure you for expansion or if you missed something. We call it Value Added Resource. For minimal cost it may pay off in the end.