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Copper and Wire Price Sheet

Latest copper price to $/ft of metal by NEC conductor size, with an escalation-clause calculator for bids.

Metal

Defaults: IMF global price, 2026-07 monthly average, via FRED. Overwrite with today's COMEX settlement to price a US bid; COMEX has carried a premium over LME since the Section 232 copper action.
Total conductor feet, all phases and neutral; a 100 ft three-phase four-wire run is 400 ft.

Escalation clause

The clause adjusts only when the index moves more than this, in either direction. 5% is the symmetric deadband in the clause we published.
Metal value per foot–
Metal in the run–
Escalation adjustment–
Price sheet: metal value by NEC conductor size
ConductorkcmilAmpacity 75CMetal lb/kft$/ft at spot$/kft

Method and assumptions
  1. Metal value per foot = conductor metal weight (lb per 1,000 ft) x metal price ($/lb) / 1,000. Weights: copper kcmil x 3.027 lb/kft (copper 8.89 g/cm3) x 1.02 stranding; aluminum kcmil x 0.919 lb/kft (aluminum 2.70 g/cm3) x 1.02 stranding. Areas from NEC Chapter 9 Table 8; ampacities from the 75C column of Cerrowire's chart (NEC 310.16 basis).
  2. This is bare metal at the index, not a wire price. Add drawing, insulation (THHN, XHHW), jacket, reel, distributor margin (Graybar reported 19.3% gross margin for 2025) and freight. Metal is roughly a third to a half of a finished building-wire price at 2026 copper.
  3. Default price is the IMF global copper price via FRED (PCOPPUSDM), a monthly LME-based average. US bids clear off COMEX, which traded $100 to $1,000 a tonne over LME through 2026; enter the COMEX settlement of the day.
  4. Escalation: adjustment = (index at PO or delivery minus index at bid) x copper content in pounds. If you enter a copper share instead of pounds, pounds = line price x share / index at bid. The adjustment is zero inside the deadband and applies in full, either direction, outside it. Clause text: "Conductor and cable pricing is based on the COMEX high-grade copper front-month settlement of $X per pound on the bid date, applied to N pounds of copper content per the attached conductor schedule. If the settlement on the conductor PO date differs from the bid price by more than 5%, the conductor line is adjusted by the full difference times the scheduled copper content, in either direction. No markup applies to the adjustment."
Copper 2026-07: $13543/t, $6.14/lb.

Method

Metal value per foot = conductor metal weight (lb per 1,000 ft, from NEC Chapter 9 Table 8 areas at 3.027 lb/kft per kcmil for copper and 0.919 for aluminum, times 1.02 for stranding) times the metal price. Default prices are the IMF global copper and aluminum prices via FRED (PCOPPUSDM, PALUMUSDM, latest monthly average); US bids clear off COMEX, which carried a premium over LME through 2026, so enter the settlement of the day. The result is bare metal, not a wire price: insulation, distributor margin and freight sit on top. The escalation calculator applies the clause published in the copper tariff piece: full difference between the index at bid and at PO, times the scheduled copper content, outside a symmetric deadband.

Every input is mirrored to the URL so a scenario can be shared as a link.

Default assumptions come from the Public Bid-Tab Price Book. Pro subscribers can save inputs. Institutional seats get the underlying series.

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