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Facts about AWG Marine Battery Cable and Other Electrical Cable

29th Jun 2021

At EWCS Wire, we sell a wide range of specialty electrical wires and cables that are intended to be used for various purposes. Although all wires and cables are engineered to carry an electrical current in some capacity or other, no two are exactly alike, and their physical features will impact their fitness for a given setting.

One such example is AWG marine battery cable, that is specifically designed for use in marine settings due to its high flexibility and corrosion resistance - but this is far from the only item. In addition to marine grade cables, we also sell welding cables, alarm and instrumentation cables, aluminum cables, pump cable, tray cable, building wire and cable and much more - and here are some little known facts about them.

●AWG, or American Wire Gauge, is an inverse measurement

Take a quick look through our inventory and you won’t be able to avoid labels such as “AWG,” among any others. For its part, AWG standards for American Wire Gauge and it is a widely used standard for assessing the general cross sectional area of wires and cables. The greater the cross sectional area, the more voltage and current the cable should be able to manage, notwithstanding other factors such as insulation and conductor material.

What you may also notice is that AWG is given as a number that will frequently appear as “12” “4” or even “6/0,” which does not correspond neatly to what the size of the wire appears to be. AWG is an inversely proportional metric, which means that the larger the number gets, the thinner the wire. On the other end of the spectrum, the wires labeled as “2/0,” “4/0,” and “6/0,” are wider than wires with 2, 4 or 6 AWG ratings.

●Cable and wire are not the same, but cable is made of wire

A lot of people who are not particularly familiar with electrical wire and cable may use the terms interchangeably, but the truth is that wire and cable are not the same. Strictly speaking, electrical wire refers to a single conductor; as soon as you add more than one, it becomes a cable.

Cables are braided together from many, thinner individual conductors, and the reason for this is to add flexibility to a cable. The higher the strand count and the thinner the conductors, the better the cable will be able to sustain repeated stresses and bending. It’ll also be a lot more amenable to be worked into position.

For this reason, cables such as AWG marine battery cable and welding cable must be made from a very high number of conductors so that they will remain flexible.

●Not all conductors are made of copper, and copper is not always the best

Another common misconception is that most if not all cables and wires are made from copper. It’s true enough that plenty are, but copper is not only not the only electrical conductor, it is not even categorically the best.

Copper has decent tensile strength, is relatively flexible, highly malleable, and can be sourced relatively cheaply. More importantly, despite the fact that it is very heavy, copper has a pretty low conductivity, which means that current can pass along it without heating it up too excessively. These reasons have indeed made copper a widely used conductor.

However, there are situations in which other conductors such as aluminum, gold or potentially even silver have been used as electrical conductors and have been more effective than copper. For example, gold, which is sometimes used in high-end technological circuitry, is an excellent conductor, better even than copper. It also exhibits chemical nobility, which frees it from concerns regarding corrosion.

AWG marine battery cable is not made of silver or aluminum

As mentioned above, silver is an excellent conductor, and aluminum, for its part, is also very useful in certain applications (which will be detailed further below). If you strip away a little section of marine battery cable, if it’s fresh, it will look bright and silvery.

However, this electrical conductor is not only not aluminum, it is not silver either. Rather, high quality marine battery cable is made up of a very large number of individually tinned copper conductors. This gives the cable itself the appearance of either silver or aluminum, but since its purpose is to forestall corrosion, it’s actually neither.

AWG marine battery cable must be highly flexible and resist corrosion

AWG marine battery cable, also known as marine grade cable or just marine cable, is not simply made up of individually tin plated copper conductors in the manner described above. There is a very specific reason that this is the case, and it has to do with two very important prerequisites: marine battery cable has to be both flexible and corrosion resistant.

Marine cable is used in situations in which it will come into contact with seawater, which will accelerate the pace at which copper oxidizes, which can cause the breakdown of an electric circuit. Copper is an excellent conductor; copper oxide is a terrible conductor.

Additionally, the marine cable should be very flexible, for two important reasons. One is that the wire must navigate the corners and turns it will have to make within the walls or bowels of a vessel. The other reason is so that it can “bend” instead of “breaking,” since a boat is in constant motion. In essence, it is a measure of resiliency.

●Silver actually is an excellent conductor, but is rarely used

Speaking of silver as a conductor, it is actually an excellent conductor and one of the best that can be used. However, it is not used particularly frequently, because of a few of its unique traits.

For example, although silver is an excellent conductor and is similar in strength, ductility and malleability to copper, it is also highly reactive. Copper is reactive too, but it is also much less expensive than silver, giving copper an advantage.

Justifying the expense, gold can be used as an alternative because gold has excellent conductivity, low resistivity, and excellent ductility and malleability as well. However, the difference between gold and silver is that gold, though more expensive, is chemically noble, which protects it against corrosion.

●Not all fire alarm cables can be used in the same situations

Fire alarm cables, like other instrumentation, monitoring and alarm cables, are low voltage rated cables the purpose of which is to carry electrical signals corresponding to sensitive information across the different nodes on a system.

However, no two cables are created equally, and even among specific types of cables like fire alarm cable, there is significant variance. For example, cables are rated according to the situations in which they can be used, such as plenum versus riser rated cable.

Riser space is the space that exists between floors in buildings, for the purpose of running electrical wire and other pipes and conduits. Plenum space is the space that exists above a drop ceiling, which is also used for communication between systems, as well as HVAC ductwork. This space can be very hot and very unforgiving, and so only plenum-rated cable should be used there - which features higher-heat resistance in its insulation and which will not produce toxic smoke when burned.

●Welding cables must be highly flexible

Welding cables are responsible for carrying power to welding equipment, which can be high voltage and which often takes place in situ, outside in the elements. It can be blazingly hot or frigid cold on industrial job sites, wet or dry, or even saturated with chemicals, oil or gasoline. There’s little telling which, but these sites can be physically and chemically demanding.

However, welding cable must go where the welder is needed, and as such it must be robust enough to carry the requisite power while flexible enough to go where it must. For that reason, welding cable, like marine electrical cable, is made from a high count of copper stranded conductors for excellent flexibility.

●Our welding cables can be used for more than welding

Because of their durability, chemical and physical resistance, and high level of flexibility, our welding cables have a number of other useful applications. For example, our welding cables, which are rated to 600 volts between the temperatures of -50 to 105 c (dry), are also useful as solar hookups and as battery leads. That’s one of the reasons they’re available in red and black insulation, for those that wish to use them as leads.

They’re also made with extremely tough insulation that is UV and weather resistant as well as resistant to oil and gasoline, making them exceptionally tough.

●Aluminum has a lower conductivity than copper, but is sometimes superior

Aluminum, like silver, is sometimes used as opposed to copper as an electrical conductor. However, in the case of aluminum, its conductivity is close to copper but not superior, which begs the question of why one would intentionally choose a categorically inferior conductor.

There are a few reasons. One is that aluminum is very affordable compared with copper and has also been historically available when copper was rationed or scarce. Also, aluminum is every bit as ductile and malleable, and it is significantly lighter. It is very easy to lay along trays and raise aloft, whereas copper is more difficult to work and very heavy. All of these relative benefits have resulted in aluminum’s widespread use of electrical work.

●Resistivity gives a measure of how effectively wire can handle voltage or current

In electrical work, you will come across related terms like conductivity and resistivity. A material’s resistivity will impact its conductivity, and resistivity is a measure of how much the material will “push back” on the flow of electrons through it.

Resistance or resistivity, measures in Ohms (signified by the Greek letter Omega [Ω]). The higher the resistance in Ohms, the less effective a material is as a conductor and the hotter it will get as electricity flows through it, which is not good.

●Cable insulation is not only necessary to protect wires against mechanical damage

One of the first lines of protection that insulation offers to a wire or a cable is against mechanical damage. However, some insulation, like PVC jackets or cross-linked polyethylene (XLP), can protect against other chemical influences.

Some of these are resistant to gas, oil, acids and alkali compounds, and other chemical influences in addition to sunlight and moisture, and can be instrumental in protecting electrical infrastructure.

●Not all armor is effective against moisture

While you will notice that some insulation is expressly moisture resistant, like our welding cable’s insulation, not all is. You can sometimes see in the nomenclature of the insulation if it is effective at protecting against moisture, or more broadly, against weather, but never assume that it is.

●Current capacity is not consistent

Interestingly, a cable’s ability to carry a current is not consistent and does not remain stable throughout its lifetime. Factors such as the temperature of the air or ground, as well as what the cables have been placed in or how deeply they have been laid, can all affect cables’ ability to carry current. That said, it is critical never to exceed a cable’s voltage rating, which is extremely dangerous on several levels.

●Voltage and current are not the same

Voltage and current are related but not the same. Current, measured in amperes (or amps), is a measure of how much electricity is flowing through a wire or cable, but voltage, given by the current multiplied by the resistance, gives a measure of electrical potential, or how much “electrical pressure” is pushing the current forward. That is, current is how much is flowing and voltage is how much force is acting on it.

Hopefully you found some of these facts informative, and you’re one step closer to getting the AWG marine battery cable or fire alarm cable you need for your project, but if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at sales@ewcswire.com or at 800-262-1598 and we will be happy to help.