“But the cost,” Lena protested weakly.

“Kid, that number on the spec sheet—it’s a lie. Or rather, it’s a truth that lives in a perfect world. A laboratory. It assumes the cable is floating in mid-air at 30 degrees Celsius, with nothing else around. But look where we are.”

He knelt and sketched in the dust on the floor.

He pulled a fresh roll of 70mm² cable from his cart. “This is what we need. It has the copper cross-section to lower the resistance, produce less heat per amp, and survive the group and the heat. Bigger cable, more copper, more surface area to shed the heat.”

Lena looked at her 85-amp load. “So my 100-amp rated cable… in this real world… what can it actually carry?”