We buy surplus bare copper wire

Bare soft-drawn copper asks one question: what size, and how clean. Sizes run from 6 AWG through 500 kcmil, in coils, straight lengths and short grounding pigtails. It comes from substation ground grids, plant bonding, solar fields and the crews who work alongside all three. Most of it arrives already sorted by size.

Because there is no insulation, the review is short. Size, form and cleanliness decide it. A coil of bright 4/0 that has been indoors reads very differently from a bundle that spent two years in a yard, and the difference shows in the first photograph.

Clean copper, tinned copper and corroded copper

Bright bare copper is the reference point. Tinned copper carries a thin tin coating that was put there for corrosion resistance, usually on finer strands and on cable that was headed for a wet location. The coating is read as a separate condition rather than as a defect.

Corrosion is the real dividing line. Green verdigris on the surface, black oxide between strands, or white powder from a caustic exposure all mean the copper has to be cleaned or taken as recovery. Painted copper and copper with fittings welded on are noted too, since both change handling.

Coils, straight lengths and grounding pigtails

Ground grid conductor usually arrives as coils, often still banded from the mill, sometimes in the original wrap with the size printed on it. Straight lengths come from bus connections and jumper work, and they are easier to measure but harder to stack.

Pigtails and short cut lengths are the material most often thrown away and most often worth keeping. A coffee can of six-inch 2 AWG tails is not a lot, but a five-gallon pail of them is. Keep them separate from the coils so they are not discounted with the sweepings.

Keeping bare copper out of the insulated pile

The one mistake that hurts a lot is mixing bare copper into a box of insulated wire. Once the two are together, the whole box has to be sorted before either can be read, and a clean bare copper lot loses the advantage it had. Keep them in separate containers from the start.

Label each container with the size range and whether the copper is bright, tinned or corroded. If a ground grid was cut out with the exothermic connections still on it, say so. Those connections are removed before the copper is handled, and knowing they are there avoids surprises.

Bare copper moves through Central Texas with the ground grid work. Substation rebuilds around Austin Energy and the cooperatives at Bluebonnet and Pedernales produce coil ends and jumper cut-offs, and each rebuild leaves a quantity that nobody wants to carry to the next yard.

Solar construction west of the city and along the SH-130 corridor uses bare copper for array grounding and equipment bonding, and a resized project leaves coils behind. Plant work in Taylor and Round Rock adds the same material in smaller amounts, usually as straight lengths.