4sq vs 6sq electric wire

funnyname

Is there any easy way of telling the difference between the two?

My garage is connected to the main fuse board of the house by an unmarked black cable that's about 12.5mm thick. There's a sub board in the garage and I've been able to use electrical equipment pulling 6kw at the same time without tripping the fuses in this board. If I loaded it with more draw and the fuses didn't trip would this give me an indication of what it was?

mikewest

Cable will be marked somewhere every 1 metre or less. There is not really any other way to tell as there is very little in the diameter difference between the two sizes (0.6mm approx) unless you are comparing solid core with solid core from the same manufacturer.

(How many strands, strand profile, etc)

funnyname

Thanks, the only marking on the black cable are the following

prysmian base electric cable 600/1000v bs5467

funnyname

That's the RCD on the house fuse board for the office

meercat

That’s a 25amp mcb so most likely only 4mm cable as that’s what maximum protection rating would be

if it were a 6mm cable I’d expect to see 32amp protection

no way of telling on the internet without measuring the csa of the conductor but an experienced electrician could probably tell from seeing the cables on site

Tefral

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121921427#Comment_121921427

It if you can see that, its on the opposide side in the middle of everytime one of those comes up. It has to be wrote on the cable.

tomhammer..

4 and 6 stranded are not very difficult to differentiate

There's a big enough difference in the sizes

Lenar3556

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058342785/4sq-vs-6sq-electric-wire

Not really, MCB’s have significant overload tolerance.

12.5mm diameter isn’t a lot. It’s probably an SWA cable and my guess would be 2.5mm2.

Why do you need to know out of interest?

funnyname

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121927757#Comment_121927757

I want to put solar panels (4.35kw system) on the office roof, along with a string inverter and then send the excess AC back to the house where a hybrid inverter will decide what to do with that and the what's generated from the panels on the house.

GarlicBed

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121930522#Comment_121930522

Not how it works. Your panels need to connect to the inverter. inverter in the office.

no need for a string & a hybrid.

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121936464#Comment_121936464

Hi, don't mean to be on your case - all input is appreciated on these forums - but you can do what @funnyname mentioned, but it just wouldn't be an optimised solution as the inverters would not be interconnected.

Basically the concept is that the office panels and string inverter wouldn't have a CT, so would would generate power from whatever solar energy is available to them, covering the house's base load and the export the remainder to the grid. Separately the hybrid inverter would have a CT and it would use that to manage the battery SOC, taking on charge when export to the grid is occurring and also possibly taking on charge during night-rate periods and contributing to the house load when the string-inverter isn't capable of generating sufficient energy. All very possible in theory, only limited by the micro-generation export limitations on the grid connection which is a sum of the generating capacity of the two inverters.