New shop building. 3 phase or single phase option?

[Graham Gott]

What kind of conductors and panel(s) were used for your 400 amp service? I’ve only seen 400A 1ph service done once and in that install the electrician opted to use 2 parallel runs of 200A ea and 2 200A panels.

I will need to upgrade my shop electrical service at some point to handle a 40hp RPC.

At my last house I had 400 amp service. It was 350 mcm aluminum wire to the meter base, where it split 200/200 between the house and the shop with 4/0 aluminum conductors. The county electrical inspector spec'd the wire sizes. It was a lot of runaround to speak to the correct person to get this done when dealing with FirstEnergy in northeast Ohio.

 

[david n]

I can run everything I need to on my single phase. The op’s stated load would too. So this argument doesn’t apply here.

David N…. My post related to cost of operation not installation. You don’t mention your monthly cost operation vs monthly cost of a single phase service. I’m sure it’s probably another “it depends “. My point is/was that monthly cost difference can be very big.

My house has electric heat(boiler with in floor), electric H2O, and a stay at home wife homeschooling the kids............we use more juice than most folks as no one leaves for work for 8 hrs + a day. We're at home all day every day...................in the winter an electric bill can be $4-500 bucks/mo...................

My shop has 6 CNC's, saw, compressor, etc....................when runnin' pretty heavy my shop bill might hit $500-550/mo.....................