A little strange on my Tesla Panel. They installed the snap on Plastic Breaker ties on almost all of my breakers. So even a single 120Volt outlet circuit has a plastic tie on the handle that connects it to the next breaker position. This means that to turn off one breaker, I have to switch both off. Wondering if anyone else is seeing this? Doesn't seem to be needed except for 240 Volt circuits like Oven and Electric Dryer.
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Breaker Ties
- Thread starter DoyleS
- Start date
Here is a picture. The plastic breaker ties are labeled Common Trip, which means if one of the breakers trips, the other one that is tied to it will also trip. Makes sense on a 240 circuit but not sure why they would do this on individual 120 circuits and shut off a neighboring circuit. When I say Tesla panel, Tesla pulled all of the circuits off of my 200 amp panel and brought them into the garage to a Tesla installed backup panel and to a non backup panel. The only thing left in the outside panel is a 100 amp breaker that goes to a separate sub panel in the house. My original service was 400 amp with a 200 amp main panel and a non backed up 100 amp sub panel.
I am not an electrician, nor do I play one on TV, but I believe that if your house is wired with a common neutrals, i.e. two separate circuits sharing only a single neutral wire back to the panel, I believe that tied breakers are now recommended(?), or required by code. @wwhitney?
Again, not an expert, but I believe that the thinking is that by tying the breakers together, you ensure that the return neutral is unpowered when the breaker is off. With unpaired breakers, the "other" breaker could be energizing the common neutral, making the common neutral potentially unsafe to work on / be around.
All the best,
BG
Again, not an expert, but I believe that the thinking is that by tying the breakers together, you ensure that the return neutral is unpowered when the breaker is off. With unpaired breakers, the "other" breaker could be energizing the common neutral, making the common neutral potentially unsafe to work on / be around.
All the best,
BG
RKCRLR
Active Member
The only thing I can thing of is keeping the branches in balance. But I would have thought the 2 branches were opposite of each other.
I am no where near close to being an Electrician, nor did I stay in a holiday express anytime recently, however, for the OP, my install had something similar. I have a "critical loads panel" that was installed, but every load in my home except for 1 is in my critical loads panel. The only load left in my original panel (other than the main breaker) is my EV charging circuit.
Anyway, my tesla installers did something similar, except they are bonded together not with the plastic cap, but with the metal pin between them. When I asked "how come I used to be able to turn off the circuit for my dining room individually, but now its paired with another circuit breaker", the tesla electrician basically explained something close to what @BGbreeder did above.
Boiled down to "new code" based on common neutrals I think. My lead tesla installer was fairly high up on the electrician chain for tesla, too. He told me he did the first residential powerwall install for tesla, and was a teaching electrician within the company, and one of their master electricians.
He was really chill, and super cool to chat with while they were doing my install. He was traveling around teaching powerwall installs to other crews, but lives in a city close to me, so when he wasnt traveling he did "local" installs. I got lucky to get him imo.
TL ; DR -- OP, think its normal depending on electical system in your home, and local codes.
OK, makes sense although every circuit they pulled through to the backup panel had its own Hot, Neutral and Ground. Seems awkward to me but I can live with it. Just surprised. The words "Common Trip" and the plastic pieces tends to indicate it is needed.
Doing a little additional reading after looking at comments, it looks like this is current practice to avoid overloading the Neutral Line.
Doing a little additional reading after looking at comments, it looks like this is current practice to avoid overloading the Neutral Line.
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charlesj
Active Member
"Common trip" means that it is a double pole breaker, and if one side trips, the other side will also trip. The handle is not removeable. One possible explanation is that the installers ran out of single pole breakers but had double pole breakers.
A multi-wire branch circuits (MWBC) is (for single phase) two opposite leg ungrounded conductors and one neutral conductor. MWBC breakers now need to have handle ties, which means that if you manually turn off one breaker, you will turn off the other. Handle ties do not cause "common trip". The only time an MWBC would need to be on a double pole breaker ("common trip") would be if the MWBC served both 120V and 240V loads.
Another explanation for the double pole breakers is that they are MWBCs but the installers only had double pole breakers, no handle ties.
Cheers, Wayne
A multi-wire branch circuits (MWBC) is (for single phase) two opposite leg ungrounded conductors and one neutral conductor. MWBC breakers now need to have handle ties, which means that if you manually turn off one breaker, you will turn off the other. Handle ties do not cause "common trip". The only time an MWBC would need to be on a double pole breaker ("common trip") would be if the MWBC served both 120V and 240V loads.
Another explanation for the double pole breakers is that they are MWBCs but the installers only had double pole breakers, no handle ties.
Cheers, Wayne
Those are definitely double pole breakers. If you look at the individual breakers you can see that there is only one label for each pair. Additionally the part number starts with DP, indicating double pole.
So it’s not a bunch of single pole breakers that the electrician tied together, but they just used double pole breakers.
I’ve seen other posts indicating that because of covid that there is a shortage of Square D breakers right now. Since they installed a new panel with new breakers I’m wondering if these were the only breakers they could get. Certainly 15 and 20A double pole breakers are much less commonly used than a lot of other ones, so it would seem like there is more likely that there would be old stock available.
So it’s not a bunch of single pole breakers that the electrician tied together, but they just used double pole breakers.
I’ve seen other posts indicating that because of covid that there is a shortage of Square D breakers right now. Since they installed a new panel with new breakers I’m wondering if these were the only breakers they could get. Certainly 15 and 20A double pole breakers are much less commonly used than a lot of other ones, so it would seem like there is more likely that there would be old stock available.
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