Depends on if you are grounding for safety and circuit breaker blowing, like for a receptacle, or grounding for surges etc. They keep trying to convince the world that a small surge suppressor needs a #6 wire, but that is almost impossible. #10 works well for surge suppressors.
As far as the NEC is concerned, you can go smaller than the current carrying conductors for the grounds. 120.122 has the rules but for example a 60 amp circuit can use a #10 wire. It has to do with what the circuit breaker needs in order to properly interrupt the current during a fault. For 15 and 20 amp circuits you normally would use a #14 and #12 ground respectively. From: Adam Moffett Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2025 9:14 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: [AFMUG] Equipment Ground Wire Sizes I found some code references saying that an equipment ground wire should be either equal in size to the power conductor to the equipment or based on the amperage of the circuit protection device. For example, a device on a 20A breaker would use the larger of 12ga or the size of the power conductor to the device. But then you have things like R56 calling for nothing smaller than 6 gauge. And then I have manufacturer installation guides which may go a step further and call for 4 gauge or 2 gauge. So why the apparent overkill? Is it for mechanical robustness? Performance even if connections are corroded or incorrectly torqued? I'm ok with all of that, I'm just wondering if they just want a big safety margin or if there's some electrical reason why I'd need a 2 gauge ground for a piece of equipment with 70A @ -48VDC breakers. -Adam -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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