Electricians

[toucano]

Not to mention that the additional resistance of a smaller wire creates more heat. And you know how desirable extra heat sometimes is in Hawaii.

[sansei]

I am going to stick my neck out and be the dissenting voice on the subject of going up in wire gauge at the service cable. IMHO the main reason for going with a 200A service is to make sure you have enough room for circuit breakers w/o having to put in a sub-panel. A 100A panel just does not have enough room for breakers in modern house.

Remember that 200A is at 240V = 48000VA. You would have one heck of HELCO bill if you ran any length of time at that rate. Even if you have a lot of high current draw appliances, in reality only a few are on at the same time. The NEC takes the voltage drop and resistance of the wire into account when it builds the rules. The only problem is that many electricians work off tables without understanding the basis of the tables and may miss uncommon situations.

The only thing I can think of that might change my mind is if you installed a tankless electric water heater. Even there you can save some money by only up grading the two hot rails. Really high current draw devices are almost always 240V and there is no neutral current so there is no sense in upgrading the neutral wire.

Copper has gotten so expensive that I think it only makes sense to use more of it only if there is tangible return and I don't think there is any for most people. It don't know if it is happening on the Big Island, but there are many places where wire is even being ripped out of street lighting so it can be sold to recyclers.

[kwalters145]

Thank you all for all the replies