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2.5 mm² copper — 7/.029 — 3 core, on its own 16 A MCB.
A chest freezer runs at 150–400 W, about 0.7–1.8 A at 220 V, so running current never decides this. Where the cabinet stands does. It sits in a store room, a garage or a covered veranda — hotter than the rest of the house — and is usually the furthest socket from the board. A store room in June sits well above the 30 °C the capacity table assumes, and it is heat, not distance, that eats the margin. 2.5 mm² still clears its 16 A breaker after derating; 1.5 mm² does not.
For a chest freezer in Pakistan the point is 2.5 mm² copper, three core with the earth, on a dedicated 16 A MCB, and the size is chosen for the room rather than for the compressor: at 150–400 W the cabinet draws 0.7–1.8 A of the 27 A it carries clipped direct at 30 °C, but a store room in June is nowhere near 30 °C and the cable is usually in conduit. That is where the margin goes. Read the wattage off your own rating plate first.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Appliance | Chest freezer, domestic or shop cabinet |
| Power, typical (running) | 150–400 W |
| Running current at 220 V | 0.7–1.8 A |
| Duty | Continuous, 24 hours |
| Breaker | 16 A MCB, its own way |
| Cable | 2.5 mm² copper (7/.029) |
| Cores | 3 core — live, neutral, earth |
| Capacity at 30 °C | 27 A |
| Capacity if factors multiply to 0.75 | 20.3 A — still above the 16 A MCB |
Take a real job: a cabinet 28 m of cable route from the board, in a room well above 30 °C through a Punjab summer, cable in conduit chased into the wall. Start with the drop, because that is the number people expect to decide it. At the top of the band, 400 ÷ 220 = 1.8 A, so the 2.5 loses 18 × 1.8 × 28 ÷ 1000 = 0.91 V against 29 × 1.8 × 28 ÷ 1000 = 1.46 V on 1.5 mm². Both are inside any sensible budget. Voltage drop does not settle this one.
Derating does. Suppose the correction factors for conduit in a wall and a hot store room multiply out to 0.75: the 2.5 falls from 27 A to 20.3 A and the 1.5 from 19.5 A to 14.6 A. Against the 16 A MCB protecting a 13 A socket, the heavier size still clears it and the lighter one no longer does. Take the exact factors for your own method out of BS 7671 — the point is not the 0.75, it is that the derated figure, never the table figure, is what the breaker has to sit under. That is also why our refrigerator and freezer wire size guide answers 1.5 mm² and this page answers 2.5 mm²: a dedicated fridge point is a hard-wired way on a 10 A MCB, while a store-room freezer plugs into a 13 A socket outlet on a 16 A way, and the cable has to clear the bigger breaker after derating, not the appliance.
Take the three-core version so the earth is 2.5 mm² as well: 2.5mm 3 core flexible cable for a run to a socket behind the cabinet, or 2.5mm single core copper (7/.029) where the electrician pulls singles through conduit.
Class 5 flexible copper, 50/0.25 strands, PVC insulated and sheathed, drawn on the Pilone line in Lahore. Rated 27 A clipped direct at 30 °C, 18 mV/A/m on voltage drop.
Cable is priced off the day's copper rate, so we quote per metre and per coil on WhatsApp. Send the size, the metres and your city.
We draw the copper in Lahore and sell it at the day's rate — no dealer margin. Send the run length and your city: Punjab in 1–2 days, rest of Pakistan in 2–4.