Abbreviations are all well and good – just so long as everyone knows what they actually stand for. An added problem these days is that the same set of letters can mean very different things to different people.
A typical example is the abbreviation PLTC. To a would be lawyer in British Columbia, it is very clearly the Professional Legal Training Course. But for a student of other disciplines in Massachusetts about to enroll in the Wellesley College it means the Pforzheimer Learning and Teaching Center. And, if any of them play lawn tennis and live in a town with a name that starts with the letter P; then PLTC would be the initials of their local tennis club. As if this wasn’t bad enough, they could all be People Living Through Cancer!
Are you getting confused and where do the electricians fit in to all of this? It is both simple and obvious to an electrician that PLTC stands for Power Limited Tray Cables. Most of us will know that the wires that carry electricity are often referred to as cables but, we might not understand the Power Limited Tray part.
Cable Trays
If we stop and think about it, we are probably all familiar with cable trays. Picture yourself in the underground parking area of a large mall and commercial complex. These places are very rarely finished off. Bare concrete and a lot of “stuff” up in the ceiling is the usual order of the day. You must have noticed that there is some perforated metal up there that is carrying electrical looking wiring – those are cable trays.
Power Limited
Power is what the electricity generating plant produces and, in its “raw” form is definitely high powered. Cable that takes this power away from the generating plant is known in the trade as “power cable”. Other terms are used for wiring and cable as the power decreases and the application of it becomes specialized.
As you may have guessed by now, power limited is a way of describing electrical connections where not much power is needed. These could include (but are not restricted to) the wiring for burglar alarms, cash registers, public address systems or intercoms, etc. In large complexes with many instances of such equipment, the cables will probably be run around the building in cable trays and the wiring will need to be in the PLTC classification. For more information visit http://www.customwireandcable.com/communication-cable/multi-paired-cable-shielded-type-pltc-105%C2%B0c-300v-csa-pcc-ul-2464
