Your electric panel: How it works.

You may be curious about it or never touch it out of hesitation, but your electric panel is there and becoming familiar with it will help to become comfortable with it and help in aiding you to know if something is wrong.

Your panel is likely in an area of the basement or in an interior area like a closet or living space. Ideally, a dedicated utility room. Your panel should NOT be located near a water source like a bathroom or kitchen near the sink, dishwasher, etc. The panels should be free of moisture. It’s important to know that if your panel is a Federal Pacific, Zinco, or Pushmatic, these panels are regarded as fire hazards and should be replaced by a qualified electrician.

How does my power travel?

The panel is responsible for directing where the electrical is to go in the house. Below is a diagram courtesy of InterNACHI that details the setup of a panel.

The electrical flows into the panel via two live wires that go to the main breaker. It’s the bigger breaker at the top that allows you to shut off and on the electrical current. Usually these breakers are 100-200 amp service.

Below that breaker are the individual circuit breakers and on either side of those are the buss bars. A panel will have 3 types of buss bars.

The hot buss bar (these carry the electrical current to the breakers), neutral buss bar (returns the electrical current to the source), and a ground buss bar (this bar carries any stray electrical current to the ground in a safe way). The bars are the metal strips with bolts on them and on one side is a neutral buss and the other, the hot buss bar.

The circuit breakers are for each individual service and it’s important to label these so you as a homeowner can know which is which and for us inspectors so we don’t have to to spend time flipping breakers to see which is which. The wires from the the buss bars hook into the breakers and the breakers protect against overcurrent. These breakers are more commonly GFCI’s or ground fault circuit interrupters, but can be 120V single pole, 240V double pole, or AFCI. These will be labeled on the individual breakers themselves. It’s important to make sure that the right breaker is used for the intended use. So for example, if a breaker is going to be used for a larger appliance like a fridge or an air conditioner unit, a bigger breaker is needed.

The wiring is important to know but simple. The black wiring to the breakers are the hot (live electrical current). The white wiring is neutral and connects to the neutral buss bar. And the bare wiring (bare copper, etc.) is the wiring that connects to the ground buss bar. The grounding wire will travel out from the bottom of the panel and should connect to a grounding source. Usually this is a cold water pipe or into the ground itself.

What shouldn’t my electrical panel have?

The panel should not be near moisture  sources, allow for moisture to get in or be without the deadpan cover on. Inspectors will look for these additional things but as a homeowner, you may see the following.

Double taps (two wires going into one breaker)

Any aluminum branch wiring (branch wiring should be copper and if not, this needs to be corrected by a qualified electrician)

A panel with no more additional room for breakers (this means the current panel is at capacity and either a bigger panel or a sub panel may need to be added for future additions like bigger appliances, EV charging installations, etc)

Outside of flipping the breaker back on or testing your outlets periodically with a GFCI tester, all electrical work should be done by a qualified electrician.