OT Wire Colours for Aussies and Kiwis (Others welcome to join in)

Doug_Adam

Member
Join Date
Sep 2002
Location
Perth
Posts
948
Just trying to see if there is any common practice for wire colours for 24V DC wires around the antipodean countries.

So far I have encountered the following colour schemes:

24V DC ----------0V DC

Grey/Red Stripe --- Grey
Violet ----------- Grey
Orange ------------ Grey
Orange ------------- Blue
Grey ---------- Light Blue

This has been for internal panel wiring.
All of these appear to be allowed in the A/NZ Standards.

I would like to know, what have you encountered?
What do you prefer?
My personal preference was the Grey/Red stripe and Grey scheme, but it suffered from Grey/Red stripe not always being available.

I don't really want to exclude non Australians/New Zealanders from this thread, but it is more of a local knowledge question.

Doug
 
Doug our Australian company exports MCC's OS and it was the standard for Europe for 24vdc + and 0vdc to be both purple/violet.But roughly 3 years ago we were informed that the new standard is "dark blue" for both 24v+ and 0v,and believe it or not "light blue" for 220vac neutral.
This is not set in concrete as you will always come across customers with different specifications.
banghead banghead
 
The light blue for 220V Neutral I can understand, since I think our common practice of Brown/Light blue for flexible cable seemed to come out of Europe.
 
Where I work we use grey for +24V, purple for 0V, in between is blue.
I don't know if that is the standard but all panels are done by a proffesional company so I suppose they'll know the standards.
 
IEC 204-1 should give you the European standard. I dont have it just excerpts pertaining to green/yellow for grounding and light blue for the neutral conductor.

In the US the quideline is determined by NFPA 79 16.1.2

GREEN with or without yellow stripe: Ground

BLACK: Line, load, and control at line voltage

RED: Control conductors at less than line voltage

BLUE: ungrounded DC control conductors

Yellow: ungrounded control conductors that may remain energized when the main disconnect is OFF.
Orange is used by IEC 204-1 for this purpose

White or Natural Gray: Grounded circuit conductor

White with Blue stripe: Grounded DC (current carrying) conductors

Light BLUE is IEC 204-1 neutral conductor

White with yellow stripe: Grounded ac conductor that may remain energized when main disconnect is OFF.

Someone once asked about using splices in a panel
16.1.4 Conductors and cables shall be run without splices from terminal to terminal
Excption: Splices shall be permitted to leads attached to electrical equipment, such as motors and solenoids, such spices shall be insulated wuth oil-resistant electrical tape or insulation equivalent to that of the conductors.
 
Last edited:
Yes doug both + and ov are the same colour but as you can see from the posts so far it doesn't seem that there is a stringent voltage/colour standard.At the moment our colour code we wire to is :380-440vac 3 ph all black 220vac active-brown neutral-light blue 24vdc +&ov-dark blue.For VSD shielded cable the combination is brown-blue-black.
In saying this there have been occasions where we have used all of the above colour codes because that is the standard they have in use and prefer to keep it all the same.
banghead banghead
 

Similar Topics

I have to build a industrial control panel for Austrailia that has a 24VDC Allen Bradley power supply for use in the PLC, what are the correct...
Replies
10
Views
5,328
Hi there, I wonder what are suitable wiring colours in US/California: 1. 480V, 60Hz supply in MCC/PLC cubicle (BLK in EU) 2. Transformer...
Replies
9
Views
4,179
Hi there, i was hoping for some oppinions from you all with regards to colours on +24VDC and -0VDC wires should be? To me the most common...
Replies
29
Views
19,742
G
Not really a plc question. Does anybody know the phase wire colours in Qatar ?. Being an Ex British conection, I'm 95% sure they follow the...
Replies
2
Views
2,911
Gulf project
G
Hi there, Trying to get some ascii serial communications working via RS485 (COMMREQ functions). I have attached our wiring for the COM2...
Replies
1
Views
934
Back
Top Bottom