Copperweld Launches “Get Wired” Blog : Copper Prices are back to record highs. Are you specifying Copperweld for grounding applications?

April 28, 2021

Copperweld Launched a new section of their website this month called their “Get Wired” blog. The new blog has a series of new videos explaining their product and its application. This new blog is a great reference for engineers, designers or installers looking to develop a deeper understanding of Copperweld.

If you are reading this article and you are not familiar with Copperweld, The Copperweld Grounding page does an excellent job highlighting the benefits of the material. In short, Copperweld is a bi-metallic conductor with a steel core clad (ie. metallurgically bonded) with copper. Utilities and electricians have been using it for decades for grounding and numerous other applications. In the last 15-20 years its use has increased significantly because thieves love to steal copper for its high scrap value. Copper theft has a massive cost to utilities through both the safety liability and the high cost of replacement - if you don’t think its a problem, look at the summary of articles from global news summarizing high profile thefts right across Canada. This is a huge problem (and believe it or not many utilities continue to this day to install copper and just replace it when it goes missing!). Thieves don’t steel Copperweld because it has no scrap value and its not worth stealing.

Composite Power first starting bringing this material to Canadian utilities close to 15 years ago. Over time we have convinced a large portion of our customer base to move away from bare copper for grounding and into Copperweld to help reduce theft, improve safety and lower costs. We have also established stock a numerous distributor partners across Canada so that the material is readily available for purchase.

Copper prices are hitting 10 year highs and companies that have been slow to change are going to see an increase in copper theft. Today it is a $4.48 USD/lb and is set to continue to rise.

The top applications we have seen to date are grounding applications where the conductor is exposed, things like pole grounds, fence grounds, counterpoise, equipment grounds and trench grounds (wind/solar). We have also seen a move toward increase use in sub-terranean applications such as ground grids as engineers become more familiar with the application of the material.

Copperweld has been innovating to help customers and respond to market feedback. They recently launched the ArcAngel line of conductors that are designed to be more flexible and workable than bare copper. Arc Angel meets or exceeds IEEE Std-80 Table 6 short circuit requirements, e.g. 4/0 copper is required to be 44kA. Copperweld has focused this product group to create fusing current equivalents to 2/0, 4/0, 350kcmil and 500kcmil copper.

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Working on Grounding applications? Check out our page for SAE Inc. to see how you can lower the cost of grounding design through the use of ground enhancement materials.