80A Breaker installed

[Chef Brian]

I’d call the electrician back. Looks to me like he had no business adding an 80 amp circuit to that panel. If the 60 that tripped is feeding the location that powered the 80, then no wonder it doesn’t work. That panel, like mine, appears to have two sub sections that are fed by a pair of 60 amp mains. I’d need to get a closer look at the panel to make a recommendation beyond just calling the electrician. Shoot me a PM if you want another set of eyes on it and I’ll make some time to stop by and check a few things out.

For now, set your car to 24 amps on the screen and you should be good.

Thank you so much for all the help. I’ll get those pics up in the morning.

 

[davewill]

For now, set your car to 24 amps on the screen and you should be good.

I wouldn't use that circuit at all until it's looked at.

 

[brkaus]

Looking at it enlarged - it looks to me to be a split bus breaker panel.

There are 6 breaker spots at the top, 5 available for larger loads and the top left 60a breaker is feeding all the lower smaller breakers. It has wire that loops up and goes down behind the bus bars.

Panel looks too small to me for an extra 80a breaker and without a main breaker in that panel it would be easy to overload.

is the WC breaker one spot lower than indicated by the blue? Without a panel wiring diagram or close inspection, I cannot be sure, but don’t think the blue spot can trip the red breaker.

I might suggest a different electrician. Was the job permitted and inspected?

 

[eprosenx]

What size is your main breaker? Also, what size is the transformer feeding your property?

While I always want to know this personally, it really is not your problem. If you overload it and it fails, it is the utilities problem. If voltage drops too much during high load times of day or is otherwise of poor quality, just call and complain until they fix it (this applies to transformer sizing and conductor sizing to the house). The power company does not have to comply with the national electrical code, they pretty much can do whatever they want. Some utilities have ancient tiny wires feeding a ton of houses off one transformer, others (like Portland General Electric) do a fantastic job.

A good utility will be monitoring total load on your transformer by knowing what all meters are hooked to what transformer. They can generate reports of what likely needs upgraded.

Dialing down the wall connector is not enough by itself.

Dave and I will respectfully disagree on this point. If you have a proper load calculation done and you determine that 80a (64a continuous to the car) is too much for your existing electrical service, then I would just turn the rotary dial down to an appropriate setting to keep the overall load calculations below the limit. As long as the wire is sufficient for the 80a breaker, I would not swap the breaker. This gives you the ability to later turn it back up easily if other conditions change in the house (like converting a dryer to gas, or a range, or a water heater, etc...) I am firm in my belief that this is fully code compliant since the load calculations are done on "the load to be served" and have nothing to do with the size of installed breaker. Changing the rotary dial down is a rock solid way to limit "the load to be served" and it is done in such a way that a user is not going to generally arbitrarily change.

A lot of this conversation is over my head, but here are a few pictures of my box before the electrician installed the 80A Circuit. Does this add any valuable information?

Wow, I think I was literally just this evening in an identical panel to this one helping a coworker of mine. It is a Square D QO style panel in a "split bus" configuration. The top six double breaker positions (so 12 breaker positions) are directly hooked to the incoming service wire. They are all considered "service disconnects". You can not have more than six total and so that is why you are not supposed to use single wide breakers in these positions (without a handle tie). More pictures would be great (of the stickers on the inside panel door, of the breakers themselves so we can read all the breaker sizes, of the list of what all the breakers are for aka panel schedule, and particularly of any stickers inside the sidewalls of the breaker pan/can).

If it is identical to the one I was in tonight, it is actually a 200a panel (it was very common to have these split bus panels for 200a services since the 200a breakers were expensive). So charging your car at the full 48a charge rate (takes up 60a of capacity due to it being considered a "continuous load") is likely very doable if that is the case. To the untrained eye, I think you may have 4/0 wire feeding that panel which is what the code requirement is for a 200a service (though it is very old wire). Can you read anywhere on that main thick cable what size it says it is? (may be embossed on the sheath).

I am very concerned that somehow the 60a breaker blew. Has that *ever* happened before? The car should have no impact on that. My concern is that perhaps the new breaker has a bad connection to the bus, or the bus has an issue, or the bolt to the main lugs or the main lugs connection to the main service wires has an issue that is causing heat to build up. Heat from the main terminal lugs or a bad breaker connection could conduct down the bus and cause the 60a breaker to false trip. (that is where I would pull out my Flir camera!)

Can you also give us a rundown of the major appliances in your house? Do you have a gas or electric water heater? Gas or electric dryer? Gas or electric furnace/wall heaters? Gas or electric range? You said you have AC? Basically we have four 240v breakers to identify if they are in use or not and how much they might draw.

At the end of the day, you need to figure out what your total service capacity is (hopefully 200a), and then you need an accurate load calculation done. Then if necessary, crank the Wall Connector down to fit under that "cap". Separate from that, you need to figure out why that 60a breaker blew. Safest thing to do would be to call an electrician. I personally would use my amp meter to measure stuff to see what is actually being drawn, I would use my flir camera with it under load to see what is heating up, and I would check the tightness of all the key connections (but this is hard to do safely since you have no easy way to de-energize the top half of your bus).

Good luck and please report back what you find!

P.S. And it would be interesting to see pictures of your external meter and mast / wires back to the utility transformer and to get an estimate of how far it is, what size wires they are, and how many other houses are connected. But that really has nothing to do with your current breaker tripping issue. It would more come into play if voltage drop was too high.

 

[eprosenx]

Oh, and also please note: It is extra important to get the load calculations right in this installation since there is no main breaker to keep you from over drawing current on your main service conductors. Calculated load is the only thing that limits the max draw on them.

 

[Wennfred]

First, one of the breaker has a wire holding the switch in the On position,

Could it be that the breaker are really dirty or they look pretty beat up.

The panel has a 60amp main breaker from what I can tell. It doesn’t look right. I had to update my panel with a newer Cutler-Hammer panel and gave it some new breaker. If you go solar, you might have to update that panel as well. With my Solar & A/C I went with 200amp main breaker.

Fred

 

[brkaus]

First, one of the breaker has a wire holding the switch in the On position,

Could it be that the breaker are really dirty or they look pretty beat up.

The panel has a 60amp main breaker from what I can tell. It doesn’t look right. I had to update my panel with a newer Cutler-Hammer panel and gave it some new breaker. If you go solar, you might have to update that panel as well. With my Solar & A/C I went with 200amp main breaker.

Fred

The second double breaker spot from the top on the left? It looks to me like some sort of fused service disconnect and not a standard breaker. That wire is a pull handle. Why? That I'm not sure.

Or, does that look like wire onthe second from the bottom on the left? Cannot tell for sure...

 

[Rocky_H]

Wow, I think I was literally just this evening in an identical panel to this one helping a coworker of mine. It is a Square D QO style panel in a "split bus" configuration. The top six double breaker positions (so 12 breaker positions) are directly hooked to the incoming service wire. They are all considered "service disconnects". You can not have more than six total and so that is why you are not supposed to use single wide breakers in these positions (without a handle tie). More pictures would be great (of the stickers on the inside panel door, of the breakers themselves so we can read all the breaker sizes, of the list of what all the breakers are for aka panel schedule, and particularly of any stickers inside the sidewalls of the breaker pan/can).

If it is identical to the one I was in tonight, it is actually a 200a panel (it was very common to have these split bus panels for 200a services since the 200a breakers were expensive). So charging your car at the full 48a charge rate (takes up 60a of capacity due to it being considered a "continuous load") is likely very doable if that is the case.

Really? That seems very different from my interpretation of what that is, or at least how it works. Over the years, the kinds of panels I've seen pictures of on this forum that have these kinds of split buses have a main service disconnect breaker at the top of the column, and then all of the other breakers below that are subservient to it and accumulate their current through that main at the top.

So this configuration looks to me, like it's a 60A feeding the left column and a 60A feeding the right column. So I think these are considered like a 120A panel. So with that kind of system, I thought it would not be allowed to put in any breaker greater than 60 into either of those columns that are fed through a 60A main at the top.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding this panel type.

 

[davewill]

...Wow, I think I was literally just this evening in an identical panel to this one helping a coworker of mine. It is a Square D QO style panel in a "split bus" configuration. The top six double breaker positions (so 12 breaker positions) are directly hooked to the incoming service wire. They are all considered "service disconnects". You can not have more than six total and so that is why you are not supposed to use single wide breakers in these positions (without a handle tie). More pictures would be great (of the stickers on the inside panel door, of the breakers themselves so we can read all the breaker sizes, of the list of what all the breakers are for aka panel schedule, and particularly of any stickers inside the sidewalls of the breaker pan/can).
...

I thought this might be case, but it bothered me a bit. If this is so, then the car charging should not have tripped the 60a breaker at the top. Maybe it didn't and the trip was a big fat coincidence, but that seems unlikely. To @Chef Brian: Did the wall connector also lose power when the trip occurred?

If it is a 200a service, then It's quite possible that 80a is OK. However, having that breaker trip and take out most of his house is strange enough I still think he should have things checked out.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Really? That seems very different from my interpretation of what that is, or at least how it works. Over the years, the kinds of panels I've seen pictures of on this forum that have these kinds of split buses have a main service disconnect breaker at the top of the column, and then all of the other breakers below that are subservient to it and accumulate their current through that main at the top.

So this configuration looks to me, like it's a 60A feeding the left column and a 60A feeding the right column. So I think these are considered like a 120A panel. So with that kind of system, I thought it would not be allowed to put in any breaker greater than 60 into either of those columns that are fed through a 60A main at the top.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding this panel type.

I posted a picture of a similar panel (not the same manufacturer but a similar general idea) not long ago. It had six service disconnects but no 200A breaker (two of which fed the two lower columns), but was clearly labeled as a 200A panel (and the wire gauge into it was good for 200A) . I was told it was because 200A breakers used to be quite costly.

It is possible to overload the main service feed on such panels. In my case it could be populated with 60A * 6 breakers off the service feed if you were reckless.

 

[Chef Brian]

While I always want to know this personally, it really is not your problem. If you overload it and it fails, it is the utilities problem. If voltage drops too much during high load times of day or is otherwise of poor quality, just call and complain until they fix it (this applies to transformer sizing and conductor sizing to the house). The power company does not have to comply with the national electrical code, they pretty much can do whatever they want. Some utilities have ancient tiny wires feeding a ton of houses off one transformer, others (like Portland General Electric) do a fantastic job.

A good utility will be monitoring total load on your transformer by knowing what all meters are hooked to what transformer. They can generate reports of what likely needs upgraded.



Dave and I will respectfully disagree on this point. If you have a proper load calculation done and you determine that 80a (64a continuous to the car) is too much for your existing electrical service, then I would just turn the rotary dial down to an appropriate setting to keep the overall load calculations below the limit. As long as the wire is sufficient for the 80a breaker, I would not swap the breaker. This gives you the ability to later turn it back up easily if other conditions change in the house (like converting a dryer to gas, or a range, or a water heater, etc...) I am firm in my belief that this is fully code compliant since the load calculations are done on "the load to be served" and have nothing to do with the size of installed breaker. Changing the rotary dial down is a rock solid way to limit "the load to be served" and it is done in such a way that a user is not going to generally arbitrarily change.



Wow, I think I was literally just this evening in an identical panel to this one helping a coworker of mine. It is a Square D QO style panel in a "split bus" configuration. The top six double breaker positions (so 12 breaker positions) are directly hooked to the incoming service wire. They are all considered "service disconnects". You can not have more than six total and so that is why you are not supposed to use single wide breakers in these positions (without a handle tie). More pictures would be great (of the stickers on the inside panel door, of the breakers themselves so we can read all the breaker sizes, of the list of what all the breakers are for aka panel schedule, and particularly of any stickers inside the sidewalls of the breaker pan/can).

If it is identical to the one I was in tonight, it is actually a 200a panel (it was very common to have these split bus panels for 200a services since the 200a breakers were expensive). So charging your car at the full 48a charge rate (takes up 60a of capacity due to it being considered a "continuous load") is likely very doable if that is the case. To the untrained eye, I think you may have 4/0 wire feeding that panel which is what the code requirement is for a 200a service (though it is very old wire). Can you read anywhere on that main thick cable what size it says it is? (may be embossed on the sheath).

I am very concerned that somehow the 60a breaker blew. Has that *ever* happened before? The car should have no impact on that. My concern is that perhaps the new breaker has a bad connection to the bus, or the bus has an issue, or the bolt to the main lugs or the main lugs connection to the main service wires has an issue that is causing heat to build up. Heat from the main terminal lugs or a bad breaker connection could conduct down the bus and cause the 60a breaker to false trip. (that is where I would pull out my Flir camera!)

Can you also give us a rundown of the major appliances in your house? Do you have a gas or electric water heater? Gas or electric dryer? Gas or electric furnace/wall heaters? Gas or electric range? You said you have AC? Basically we have four 240v breakers to identify if they are in use or not and how much they might draw.

At the end of the day, you need to figure out what your total service capacity is (hopefully 200a), and then you need an accurate load calculation done. Then if necessary, crank the Wall Connector down to fit under that "cap". Separate from that, you need to figure out why that 60a breaker blew. Safest thing to do would be to call an electrician. I personally would use my amp meter to measure stuff to see what is actually being drawn, I would use my flir camera with it under load to see what is heating up, and I would check the tightness of all the key connections (but this is hard to do safely since you have no easy way to de-energize the top half of your bus).

Good luck and please report back what you find!

P.S. And it would be interesting to see pictures of your external meter and mast / wires back to the utility transformer and to get an estimate of how far it is, what size wires they are, and how many other houses are connected. But that really has nothing to do with your current breaker tripping issue. It would more come into play if voltage drop was too high.

I think I got all the requested pictures. As for major appliances I have an electric stove/oven, washer dryer, ac, (oil heat which is its own set of problems) I have an a/c window unit that I run at night... and I think that’s it.

 

[Big Earl]

That's very helpful. Your electrician installed your 80 amp breaker in the wrong location. It should be up two spaces from its current location.

By installing it where it is, it's using the top left 60 amp breaker as a main and overloading it. If your car is pulling 48 amps, that 60 amp breaker is fully loaded, excluding any other small appliances (microwave, window air conditioner, refrigerator, lights) that are running on other circuits.

Your panel is also rated at 150 amps, FYI.

 

[davewill]

I think I got all the requested pictures. As for major appliances I have an electric stove/oven, washer dryer, ac, (oil heat which is its own set of problems) I have an a/c window unit that I run at night... and I think that’s it.

I think I see part of the problem. That 80a breaker should have been one (double) position higher. As it is, it is being fed by the 60a breaker at the top, I think. That would explain everything.

 

[Chef Brian]

That's very helpful. Your electrician installed your 80 amp breaker in the wrong location. It should be up two spaces from its current location.

By installing it where it is, it's using the top left 60 amp breaker as a main and overloading it. If your car is pulling 48 amps, that 60 amp breaker is fully loaded, excluding any other small appliances (microwave, window air conditioner, refrigerator) that are running on other circuits.

I think I see part of the problem. That 80a breaker should have been one (double) position higher. As it is, it is being fed by the 60a breaker at the top, I think. That would explain everything.

Wow thank you all so much for all of the help! I really appreciate it!

 

[davewill]

I would still insist that somebody do a proper load calculation, to be on the safe side. As @AlanSubie4Life said, with this style panel, there's no single "main" breaker that would protect the incoming service from overload.

 

[Dmagyar]

Until that last photo of the panel cover, I was going to comment on the size of the service entrance feed, it certainly is aluminum and would have to be 4/0. I do agree that the improper position for the addition of the 80 amp c/b set all of this sizable discussion into motion.
What this highlights is that there are many existing situations where conditions like this and worse where the unsuspecting public are asking for possibly unqualified electrical help for their envisioned Electrical upgrades. Our society has been lax regarding the requirement for utilizing certified Electricians and or Electrical Contractors for home improvement work. Though this hasn’t happened overnight, the advent of the substantial charging circuits for electrical vehicles presents a situation where problems, home fires and the potential for loss of life will occur with more frequency, until the public starts taking electrical upgrades to their homes more seriously...

 

[Chef Brian]

I would still insist that somebody do a proper load calculation, to be on the safe side. As @AlanSubie4Life said, with this style panel, there's no single "main" breaker that would protect the incoming service from overload.

I’ll have the electrician do this calculation. He will be out this week to correct the position of the breaker.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I’ll have the electrician do this calculation. He will be out this week to correct the position of the breaker.

To be honest, given this screw-up, I would also verify the following with the electrician , since putting the breaker in the wrong place seems like a very fundamental mistake (the panel cover makes it super obvious it is completely incorrect):

1) Why did the Wall Connector get set to 15A in the first place? Was the electrician counting on it being set this way???

2) Is the wire to the Wall Connector the appropriate gauge for 80A? What gauge is it? We cannot see in the pictures provided so far, I don’t think.

3) What is the maximum allowed disconnect size in this upper section? On the panel I’ve seen each of these locations were rated at 70A max (limited due to the subsequent manufacturer-installed jumper wiring, so possibly not an issue here)? Someone here probably knows whether 80A is ok. I think it is ok, but needs to be confirmed.

This is probably an irrelevant point in the end as it may not be allowable to use an 80A breaker once the load calculations are done.

4) Is everything else about the install code compliant?

5) What were the results of the load calculation?

6) Has the installation been inspected and deemed code compliant? In the end I’m agnostic a bit about this - if it’s done properly this is really just a formality and I’m not a huge fan of electricians or inspectors. But there’s a reason they have inspectors...and for insurance reasons you may want to have it blessed and signed off.


Anyone else have any other concerns?

 

[eprosenx]

If you go solar, you might have to update that panel as well. With my Solar & A/C I went with 200amp main breaker.

It all depends on the detail of a solar install and positions available in the panel, but I don't think this split bus style panel automatically precludes solar installations. I have in fact heard of cases where folks have switched to a split bus panel in order to get around bus loading issues for larger backfeed ability.

The second double breaker spot from the top on the left? It looks to me like some sort of fused service disconnect and not a standard breaker. That wire is a pull handle. Why? That I'm not sure.

Or, does that look like wire onthe second from the bottom on the left? Cannot tell for sure...

Yeah, I have not seen a breaker like that, but a quick search last night made me think it is legit. I think it is just a fuse holder that snaps in to a breaker position. Fuses historically I think had different trip curves than breakers and so perhaps there was a device that needed a curve instead (like an AC motor or something).

Really? That seems very different from my interpretation of what that is, or at least how it works. Over the years, the kinds of panels I've seen pictures of on this forum that have these kinds of split buses have a main service disconnect breaker at the top of the column, and then all of the other breakers below that are subservient to it and accumulate their current through that main at the top.

So this configuration looks to me, like it's a 60A feeding the left column and a 60A feeding the right column. So I think these are considered like a 120A panel. So with that kind of system, I thought it would not be allowed to put in any breaker greater than 60 into either of those columns that are fed through a 60A main at the top.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding this panel type.

I will post the bus diagram from the panel I was working on last night which I think is virtually identical. The upper left 60a feeds the entire bottom of the panel.

Note that I think the bottom right two breaker positions are not supposed to be used in this panel if it is the same as the one I was working on last night. You can see that the bottom rightmost position is labeled as such, so I think the breaker above it is not supposed to be there.

Until that last photo of the panel cover, I was going to comment on the size of the service entrance feed, it certainly is aluminum and would have to be 4/0. I do agree that the improper position for the addition of the 80 amp c/b set all of this sizable discussion into motion.
What this highlights is that there are many existing situations where conditions like this and worse where the unsuspecting public are asking for possibly unqualified electrical help for their envisioned Electrical upgrades. Our society has been lax regarding the requirement for utilizing certified Electricians and or Electrical Contractors for home improvement work. Though this hasn’t happened overnight, the advent of the substantial charging circuits for electrical vehicles presents a situation where problems, home fires and the potential for loss of life will occur with more frequency, until the public starts taking electrical upgrades to their homes more seriously...

So I do agree that we will find a lot of latent defects in electrical systems, though the good news is that EV's (at least Tesla's) are pretty advanced at avoiding a lot of bad failure scenarios. Obviously they won't be able to avoid all issues, but it does not seem to be as bad as I thought it might be.

Note that now I am curious if that wire incoming is less than 4/0 if the panel was only 150a rated. The OP needs to figure out what the incoming conductor sizes are (and hence what the service capacity is) and get an accurate load calculation done. Since it can't be more than a 150a service, the Wall Connector likely needs turned down below 80 amps.

 

[eprosenx]

Here are pictures from what I think is a nearly identical panel, but this one is 200a vs 150a.

See the bus configuration diagram: