Plug and Play Power Distribution Panels

There are several manufactures of pin and sleeve connections. Your not going to like the price.Sort of like a male and female cord ends. Only bullet proof. They are high quality and used in computer rooms for this very reason.

Hold on to your shorts they are very expensive and require certain types of cable and or race ways to be used with them. The last place I worked we had something like $30K of devices ranging from 120 volt to 3phase 5 wire for PDU's and some of the servers.

You might consider wire mold or walker duct (3000 or larger) around the perimeter of the room. You can barrier the duct and have power on side and communication on the other. Just a suggestion.

I would highly recommend that you contact someone who has designed a computer room before and PAY them for their expertise. I can not count how many computer labs I have seen that are NOT wired properly and hence cause problems down the road.

As a side note get the "Soars book on Grounding" for some easy to understand pointers on the grounding grid you SHOULD be installing. If your going to be using a raised floor then you need lots of information to get it right the first time. Raised floors are pretty nice for moving equipment about when needed.

Just my view from the cheap seats

Pin and sleeve sounds nice but I'm not sure that answers the question I asked. I need some way to wire into the fuse panel on a power distribution box without hand wiring each fuse. Once I have that going out to your pin and sleeve connectors, how does that help me to the end device, which is mostly 115V/20A three prong, and an occasional 208V/20A or 208V/30A twist-lock? I need to somehow go from these pin and sleeve connectors to outlet boxes.

The objective was to not have to custom wire any of this. I'm looking for something fairly shrink-wrap.

First off, the standard way to wire computer rooms is to use raised computer flooring. The removable tiles allow all cabling (not just the power) to be run beneath the floor, surfacing whereever you want it to and keeps everything looking just neat.

If you really want a moveable PDU (on wheels) you might phone your local PA Equipment Hire crowd - they will use distribution boards on wheels, complete with surge protection, for setting up their amp racks at large concert venues.

Secondly, there is nothing stopping you from wiring one or more dedicated "computer power outlets" beside/below/near the main distribution board and simply running extension leads to your computer racks either overhead (really messy and expensive) or sub-floor - and if you use a mobile PDU, as described above, you will need to do this anyway.

Hope this helps, Cameron:-)

One thing I've done in the past is to use bus duct. It is metal enclosed bus with ports every foot or so. you plug the equivalent of a fusible disconnect (or breaker) into the bus and drop a cable to your utilization equipment.

This is a good way to do it if your power needs are significant (say 30 KW and up) and the types of power (phases, voltages and frequency) are limited.

Circuit panels do not come with the wiring already done. The breakers are attached to the buss. Someone must connect the bus to a source and then from the branch breaker to the load. This is always done on site and to each load.

What your asking for is a kin to metal conduit with the wire already in it and bent to fit.

There are some temporary wiring systems that are designed for construction sites. Check the Daniel Woodhead company.... expensive and most have GFCI protection which you probably do not need.

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They do make computer room power centers that are prewired with receptacles for power distribution cables. (correctly or incorrectly exploiting the "or for" language in 645.5(E) ) I have stayed out of this thread because I have been out of the business for a while and I was expecting someone with more recent knowlege to jump in. Liebert may be a place to start. They were the 800 lb gorilla when computer rooms were an acre wide and used enough power for a small town. Now days the computer room may be a broom closet with a few NEMA 5-15s in it.