When it comes to wires, there is quite a lot of confusion. Especially regarding the acronyms. Case and point: What is a THWN wire? What is the difference between THHN and THWN wire? Let’s address both of these questions to get a little clearer vision about wires. THWN stands for Thermoplastic Heat and Water-resistant Nylon-coated … Read more
Let’s say you want to calculate the wire resistance. Every wire conducts electricity but this conduction is not 100% effective. A bit of electricity is lost in the wire. How much exactly? We will show you how to determine wire resistance manually and using the Wire Resistance Calculator below (just input the wire gauge and … Read more
We deal with a lot of extension cords. 10 gauge, 12 gauge, 14 gauge, and 16 gauge are the most commonly used extension cord sizes. In many cases, we are interested how many watts can a certain AWG extension cord handle, and how many amps it can handle. Examples: Watts: How many watts can a … Read more
Standard outlets can handle quite a lot of watts before catching on fire. Of course, nobody really likes to watch an outlet catching on fire. That’s why we are going to check how much wattage can a wall outlet handle. Below, we will illustrate how to calculate the max wattage for all receptacles. Standard outlets … Read more
Let’s say you have a 15 amp, 20 amp, or a 30 amp circuit. How many outlets can you put on these circuits? Usually, when we encounter these questions, we consult a relevant NEC article. The closest guideline to how many outlets can you put on 15A, 20A, or 30A circuits is found in the … Read more
If you are working with electrical feeders, you are probably acquainted with the electrical feeder size chart. This is an NEC chart (you will find it below) that tells you what size copper or aluminum wire to use for different amp services. Example: What feeder wire size do you need for 200 amp service? Simple. … Read more
Here is a question that we get quite often: Which is thicker 6 gauge or 8 gauge wire? To address this very easy question, we have created a full 6 gauge wire vs 8 gauge wire comparison in terms of diameter (mm), cross-section (mm2), and ampacity (amps wire can handle). First of all, let’s clearly … Read more
For every wire, you will need a ground wire. As you may know, the ground wire doesn’t have to be as big as the main wire. Example: 1 AWG copper wire doesn’t require a 1 AWG copper ground wire. It requires a 6 AWG copper ground wire. A ground wire size chart that follows will … Read more
As you might notice, you don’t have an amp rating on Tesla Supercharger. Obviously, many of us want to know how many amps does a Tesla Supercharger use. And the good this about this is that we can very easily calculate the amps. Namely, we know that a Tesla Supercharger has an upper power output … Read more
Why not? Some homeowners still think that you can put a 20 amp outlet on a 20 amp circuit. It seems quite reasonable, right? A 20 amp circuit is designed to handle 20 amps, that’s true. But no electrician will put a 20 amp receptacle on a 20 amp circuit. This brings us to two … Read more