3000W Chinese Gensets Info.
professor95 wrote: EDIT ADDED 45/5/2013- When this thread started in March of 2005, I never expected to see it survive this long or amass the quantity of information that has been shared here. In...
Forum Discussion
quabillion wrote:
Say professor, I thought that 30A service used #10 AWG.
You said #12 in you previous post, and I am wondering if it is a typo, or you know something I dont :)
I expected that. I just did not know who would be the first to respond.
If you are using 2 feet or less of copper wire, you can safely use the #12 AWG, saving you the problem of getting #10 to fit the duplex screws and possibly breaking the outlet in the process. Remember, it is a combination of distance and gauge. The longer the distance, the larger the gauge. For really short pieces like inside the generator there is no need to run #10 AWG wire. In fact, you won’t find anything larger than #14 in there as it comes from the factory.
For the folks that want numbers, 2 feet of #12 wire will be .00324 ohms, 2 feet of #10 wire will be .00204 ohms. Voltage drop on 2' of the #12 wire will be .0972 volts and on the #10 wire .0612 volts, a difference of .036 volts (36/1000th of a volt). That accounts for less than 1/10 of one degree F for the rise in wire temperature between the two.
Hope this does not start a deluge of NEC arguments! :B
