Doubled service drop

[Gunnar Alquist]

This is a new one on me. Anyone ever seen this? Two service drop cables that are connected to each of the SECs. The service equipment is a 400 amp panel.

If you look in the first and second pics, you can see the two separate service drops and the close-up in the 3rd pic shows two of the service drop cables attached to one of the SECs.

[wayne soper]

Never seen that. But typically the 400 amps comes underground now and generally gets split into 2 / 200's. So how cold we see it. But I know someone knows:D

[Jerry Peck]

This is a new one on me. Anyone ever seen this? Two service drop cables that are connected to each of the SECs. The service equipment is a 400 amp panel.

Commercial building?

Could it have been two separate "structures" (i.e., two separate stores) at one time? That would be my first thought.

Next would be the power company running parallel service drops, but that would be hard to explain when one fails and the remaining service drop does not carry the load, normally the power company would just run larger conductors.

So I'm going back up to my first thought ... could it have been two services at one time?

[Gunnar Alquist]

Jerry,

Mixed-use. Retail space with residential apartments above. One restaurant, 5 retail stores, one office and two apartments. The service drop and SECs are not terribly old. The building has been around for a couple of decades or more. The service drop cables appear to be newer than the building and about the same age/condition (as each other). The building was remodeled a few years back and newer electrical service installed at that time. I am guessing that the utility service truck only had the one size and doubled-up to be able to meet the needs of the building.