Solar Panels - Adding Another Main Breaker For Our House
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ค. 2024
- When we expanded our Solar Panel system on the house, it was decided that we should also add an extra layer of protection against any potential electrical overload. Here's an explanation of why that was necessary, along with a basic lesson about how electricity flows from "the grid" into a typical house's wiring.
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Your solar breakers should be in the furthest slots way from the main
Good stuff greg,keep it up.
Good info, thanks Greg. Although the metal cover in your meter panel (where your main beakers are) is not set/installed correctly. Needs to be pushed flush with breakers. I can literally see it pushed up against the lower breaker, not safe as it can cause breaker to be unable to shut off properly.
(General contractor, and would chew out a sub if they did that shit)
Great video. I had solar installed in sunny California home. I had no issues for first 6 months until I left for a 6 week vacation. Before leaving for vacation, I turned hot tub off, while I vacation my son visited home and found the main circuit tripped. My electrician says it is due to a violent surge of power coming from my solar. My solar company hasn’t come out yet to inspect but says it can’t be true. In your opinion, what could be causing the tripping if I am.not home to consume power, yet have solar generating?
Greg I want to know more about this and I have to replace the shingles on my garage and would like to maybe make half of my garage have the solar panel on the roof. I need to reduce my bills to build my house, electric bill is one that can be between 100 and 350 per month depending on the time of year. Will you let me know more?
To clarify, what does that "mixer" wiring look like underneath? is it simply Grid-lin-in via a breaker to a Solar-line-in via a breaker to the same bus bar? and then a breaker going to your MAIN FUSE BOX? If yes (or similar) couldn't you have just added a breaker directly to the Main Fuse box and "mix" it there? I'm trying to find more information about this online, but, seems I'm using the wrong terminology as there isn't any vidoes with that specific deatail of "mixing" existing grid and Solar into one place.
Greg- I had solar installed in June 2021 sunny California. Is it possible to trip main circuit breaker if less energy is consumed? Example, I left home for 6 weeks, turned off my hot tub as well, when my son v checked on my home he found power outage. My electrician came in and stated the solar was generating a violent surge therefore tripping breaker. Is it possible to trip circuit breaker because low consumption of power plus generation of too much power cause the circuit breaker to trip?
I’m not sure what he meant by “violent surge”. The solar panels produce DC and the inverter converts that to AC. The panels would only produce a “surge” if there were a surge of sunlight. The inverter shouldn’t be making surges unless it’s malfunctioning. If the inverter is making more electricity than the house is drawing then it should be going back to the grid (at least, the way our system is set up). If something is tripping breakers then it would seem to me that the solar power system is not properly matched to the breakers being used.
thanks for this video.. I'm still unclear about the "MIXING" of energy sources. (grid and solar) is that ok to do? using your analogy of water, if I have 2 low pressure water hoses, filling a bucket, mixing dis-simlar water is fine. there is no such thing as "back feeding". but. I thought that with electricity, that IS a thing to worry about. no? Where my confusion lies is with my gasoline generator 5kw. I was told never to hook it up to the breaker box without 1) turning off main breaker, 2) never at the same time as the grid, for fear of back feeding. Would this also happen with solar panels? or does it have to be one or the other? sorry for confusion.
Please help.. I'm very stuck here.
The thing with this solar panel system is that it is specifically designed to feed power into the grid whenever it’s generating more than the home is using at that moment. A gas-powered backup generator is usually not designed to do that. That’s why your breakers are set up to keep the gas generator and the grid from interacting.
@@GoodTimekeeper ok, so, then, how does the Grid know to supply less power than the solar (inverter)? i.e. my usage is 10kw, and my inverter is sending 6kw to the breakerbox. how did the grid just "know" to supply less than 100% from the inverter? i.e.e. why didn't the solar back off? while grid provides the power? or somewhere in between? Yes, Ideally it would be 100% of available power from solar (inverter) and what ever deficiency would come from grid. I just don't know what regulates that? is it because the grid is farther away? solar is stronger being local? what governs this?
@@GoodTimekeeper following up with the water analogy (yes I know it's not an exact comparison), but, if you had 2 hoses filling a bucket, and you had to maintain 10L/min. and one hose started churning out more, what would tell the other hose to supply less?
The grid provides as much power as the house demands. If there were no solar panels and I had everything in the house turned off then the grid wouldn’t push any power into the house. If I then turned on a 60 watt light then the grid would only provide 60 watts. If I turned on a 1500 watt heater then the grid would immediately provide 1500 more watts. If I turned everything off again then the grid would instantly stop pushing power into the house. So that’s where the water pressure analogy doesn’t quite fit. Yes, there’s lots of electricity available but it’s not “flowing” into the house if there is no demand. It’s not building up “pressure” while the demand is low.
The danger is that the lines into the house are like pipes (or hoses) which can only withstand a limited amount of pressure. So if the “demand” for electricity exceeds what the incoming wiring can safely handle then you need circuit breakers to stop that demand. Otherwise the “pipes will burst.”
@@GoodTimekeeper Thanks Greg, especially for breaking it down with analogy and simple form to get a good basis for me. sounds like I could talk to you for hours. I've been trying to wrap my head around the finite details for a few weeks. I'll still get an installer to do it, but, I want to know what he is doing, and then be able to experiment with it on house, or maybe even future boat project. 🙂
Going along same lines as your grid "demand" item. if the solar panels are hooked up, and producing 2000w, but nothing on inside the house, is that a problem for any wires? or is it also "dormant", with no issues, no buildup anywhere?
I figured that's how it works, but, I do want to make that 100% clear and confident in my brain.
If you want to see a visual representation of the flow of electricity in your home, simply take a look at the electric bill!
10:50 that's stupid. like seriously, who ever designed that will cut you off from solar and grid tie all with one switch. and theres too many lines being run from the grid\solar to that secondary switch and than back to the primary panel going toward your house breaker box. I would throw all that away and restart from the beginning.
120% rule violation..
No, they derated the main 200-amp panel by reducing the main breaker from 200 to 175 now the busbar can only be fed max power of 175 amps from the grid and 40 from one inverter and 20 from the other looks like micro inverters I maybe lease system. Total is 175 grid + 60 amps of solar comes out to 235 amps 5 amps under the 120% of 200 which is 200x1.2 = 240 amps. Not sure why they added that 2nd panel maybe so someone could cut off the sub panel inside without access to the home.
If you want to go green cut power company off. But use baterry for night time sir.
That's ugly. I would have just put in a smaller main breaker.
You spent 10 minutes, too much time talking nothing about solar panels. Waste of time.
I have other videos. In this one, I talked about the need to add another main breaker to our house because we had too many “solar panels” to rely on just the protection from our original breaker alone.
YOU SPLAIN NOTHING,,,,