Grounding and bonding · bare copper and copper-clad steel
Grounding grid conductor buyers in New York
Grid conductor does its work underground for forty years and then comes out in pieces with lumps of exothermic weld on it. Most of it is recovery material, and the size and the copper content still decide what it is worth.
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Removed grid conductor is almost always sold on copper content rather than for reuse. It is cut out in short lengths, it carries welded connections that cannot be undone, and it has been in soil for decades. Two things still move the price: the size, because 500 kcmil is several times the copper per foot of 2/0, and the cleanliness of the lot, because solder, fittings and steel drag the recovery rate down.
What is actually in the ground
A substation grounding grid is a mesh of bare conductor buried a meter or so down, bonded to every structure, frame, fence, transformer tank and cable sheath in the yard, and tied to ground rods driven below it. The conductor is almost always soft-drawn stranded copper. Small and older stations use 1/0 or 2/0, larger yards use 4/0, and big transmission stations use 500 kcmil on the main grid with smaller conductor on the bonds.
Copper-clad steel, usually called copperweld, appears where mechanical strength or resistance to theft matters: rods, counterpoise runs, and sometimes the grid itself in rocky ground where copper would be damaged during installation. It is steel with a metallurgical copper cladding, commonly at 40 percent conductivity, and it behaves very differently at resale because most of its weight is not copper.
Connections are why removed grid is recovery material
Grid joints are made to last as long as the station. The default is an exothermic weld, a single-use graphite mould and a charge that fuses the conductors into one piece of copper with no mechanical interface to corrode. There is no way to unmake that joint in the field: to remove a grid you cut the conductor either side of every weld, and what comes out is a collection of short lengths with nodules on the ends.
That single fact decides the market. A removed grid cannot be sold as a reel of 4/0, because it is not in lengths anybody can pull. It is sold by weight, and the buyer's question is about copper content and contamination rather than footage. Compression connectors and bolted clamps can be cut away; brazed joints cannot; and a length with a chunk of steel fence post still welded to it is weighed with the steel in it.
IEEE 80 in one paragraph, without pretending to design anything
IEEE 80, the guide for safety in AC substation grounding, is the document behind the grid. It sets out how to keep touch and step voltages within limits a person can survive for the duration of a fault, and it gives a method for sizing conductor so it survives the fault current without fusing. Both calculations depend on the station: the fault current available, the clearing time, the soil resistivity, the surface layer and the geometry of the yard.
The practical consequence for a seller is that grid conductor size is not a catalog choice. It was calculated for one station, at one fault level, at one point in time. A buyer cannot infer from a coil of 4/0 what it was designed for, and we do not offer to redesign a grid from a photograph. What we can say is what the copper weighs and what it is worth as conductor.
- Copper is copper: a fresh cut should be bright, whatever the surface looks like
- Green patina is normal; white or pale green powder in cinder fill is not
- Welds add weight and subtract value, and cannot be removed cleanly
- Copper-clad steel is magnetic and much lighter in copper than it looks
- Braid, jumpers and fittings are a separate category from grid conductor
Digging it out safely
A grounding grid is bonded to equipment that may still be energized, and it is the return path for fault current on the whole station. Nothing should be cut until the station is isolated, the circuits are cleared and grounded under the owner's switching procedure, and the grounding system itself has been formally released. Cutting a grid conductor while adjacent circuits are live creates a step and touch hazard in the excavation, which is exactly the condition the grid exists to prevent.
Excavation is the other half. Buried cable, conduit, counterpoise and abandoned ducts share the same trench, and a machine bucket finds them all. Hand digging near known conductors, locating before digging, and keeping the spoil away from the exposed grid are the owner's call, executed by their crews. Our part starts when the copper is in a pile and the weights are known.
Specification
What a buyer needs to know about this cable
Every row below changes what a lot is worth. If the reel tag is gone, the jacket print and a cut end usually answer most of it.
Missing detail is not a problem — say what is missing and the review works from photographs.
| Grid conductor | Bare soft-drawn stranded copper, 2/0 to 500 kcmil; 4/0 and 500 kcmil in larger yards |
|---|---|
| Small-site sizes | 1/0 and 2/0 stranded, or 2 AWG solid on older and smaller installations |
| Copper-clad steel | 40 percent conductivity conductor and 5/8 in or 3/4 in ground rods, 8 ft and 10 ft |
| Connections | Exothermic welds, brazed joints, compression connectors, bolted clamps |
| Burial depth | Commonly 18 in to 36 in, with rods driven below the grid |
| Cover | Native soil, crushed stone, or cable trench backfill |
| Weight | About 0.41 lb/ft at 2/0, 0.65 lb/ft at 4/0, 1.53 lb/ft at 500 kcmil, bare copper |
| Condition signals | Bright copper at a fresh cut, black or green patina, pitting, thinning, welded nodules |
Constructions
Grounding material we review
The category runs from heavy grid conductor to a bucket of bonding jumpers, and each is priced differently.
Grid conductor
Bare stranded copper from a retired yard, cut into short lengths with weld nodules. Sold on weight, with the size stated from a cut end rather than from memory.
Ground rods
Copper-clad steel rods, usually 5/8 in or 3/4 in and 8 ft or 10 ft. Reusable if the threads and the top are sound, otherwise steel with a thin copper skin.
Copper-clad counterpoise
Copperweld conductor from transmission structures and rocky yards. Magnetic, strong, and low in copper content compared with an equivalent copper size.
Bonding braid and jumpers
Tinned copper braid from structure bonds, fence bonds and equipment doors. High copper content per pound and easy to grade.
Fence and structure bonds
Small conductor, clamps and lugs from the perimeter. Mixed and usually dirty, but worth separating from the steel it was clamped to.
Salvaged with fittings attached
Conductor with welded studs, clamps and lugs still on. Weighed as-is unless the seller has the time to cut the steel away, which usually pays.
New York
Grounding copper in the New York market
Every substation retirement in the state produces grid copper, and the older urban stations produce a good deal of it in a small area. Yards built in the middle of the last century were generously grounded and often enlarged over the years with additional conductor laid alongside the original, so a single excavation can turn up two or three generations of grid at different depths.
The market for the material is the copper market, with one adjustment: clean, sorted, heavy conductor is worth more per pound than a mixed pile with steel and fittings in it. A seller who keeps 500 kcmil apart from the small bonds, and who knocks the weld nodules and clamps off where it is easy, gets a better number for the same copper. That is the whole of the advice.
What helps a New York lot move
- The sizes present, read from cut ends rather than assumed
- Approximate total weight, or the number of coils and their size
- Whether copper-clad steel is mixed in, and how much
- How much steel, brass and aluminum is attached to the copper
- Whether the material is dry or has come out of wet, cinder-filled ground
Seller questions
Questions sellers ask
Is removed grounding conductor ever reused as grid?
Rarely. A new grid needs continuous lengths and sound connections, and removed conductor comes out cut at every weld and often thinned by corrosion. There are cases where a coil of clean 4/0 from a store, never buried, is reused on a small installation, but anything that has been in the ground is bought on copper content.
How do I tell copper from copper-clad steel?
A magnet is the fastest test: copper-clad steel is magnetic and pure copper is not. A file on the end also shows it, since the cladding is a thin layer over a steel core. The distinction matters because copperweld is mostly steel by weight and is priced very differently from an equivalent copper size.
Does corrosion change what the copper is worth?
Surface patina does not, because the metal underneath is still copper and the recovery process does not care. What does matter is pitting and thinning that reduce the actual copper present, and contamination such as solder, braze alloy or attached steel. A heavily thinned conductor is still sold by weight, but there is less weight in it than the size suggests.
Why can the exothermic welds not be cut out cleanly?
Because an exothermic connection is a fusion weld, not a mechanical joint. The mould is consumed and the copper is melted together, so there is no seam to unbolt or unscrew. Removing the grid means cutting the conductor on either side, which is why the material arrives in short pieces with nodules that have to be cut or ground off.
Do you buy grounding conductor that is still attached to fence or structures?
Yes, but it is weighed as it arrives, so the steel comes off the value. Where the seller has the labor to cut clamps and lugs away and keep the copper separate, the improvement in the number is usually worth the effort. Mixed loads are priced with the contamination allowance built in.
Keep reading
Related pages
- Substation wire and bus buyersGrounding in the context of a station lot
- Aluminum tube bus buyersThe bus the grid bonds to
- Transformer lead wire buyersApparatus copper from the same stations
- Decommissioned substation cable buyersWhole-yard removals
- Utility surplus conductor buyersStore and project surplus
- Medium-voltage cable buyers5 kV to 35 kV cable
Next step
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Include the storage city, how it is stored and what can reach it. If you have photographs of reel tags or jacket print, send them with the enquiry.
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Prefer to talk? 614-715-3047 · saleselectricalbuyers@gmail.com