Background: Talented amateur electrician, not afraid to add/remove breakers, run new circuits, etc.
Started looking into adding a 14-50 outlet to my garage. Phoenix will start cooling down in the near future to where that kind of work will be possible. My problem? A full breaker panel.
I have 200A service, and a panel rated for 200A. As an all-electric home in Phoenix with a pool and jacuzzi, you can imagine that I inconvenience a lot of electrons. My panel has 20 spaces for breakers, and I currently have 30 in there using one tandem 240V and 5 tandem 120V breakers. As an amateur, swapping one of the existing 240V breakers for another tandem in order to add another 50A circuit is easy - but I don't know if it's a good idea.
I used a couple of different online load calculation worksheets to see where I stand; they all give results in the range of 260 amps.
Q: Is this a problem for an existing 200A panel?
Q: 220 amp panels seem to be the largest residential panels that are easily acquired; 400 A are available, but price goes up from $150-$200 to $800. Ouch. Do such things as 300A panels exist?
I don't have any problems with breakers tripping at this point because my loads are heavily timed due to a time-of-use electrical plan. My water heater is only allowed to run from 7:00PM to noon, my Jacuzzi runs at 9:00PM, my Pool runs at midnight. EV charging would be slotted in here also, probably running from 1:00 AM to 7:00 AM or so. This would keep me from hitting 200A in real-life, but I'm not sure that the NEC recognizes timed loads - certainly none of the online calculators allow that.
Any help out there? I wasn't sure whether to post this here, or in "charging infrastructure" but that forum seems to mostly deal with public chargers...
Started looking into adding a 14-50 outlet to my garage. Phoenix will start cooling down in the near future to where that kind of work will be possible. My problem? A full breaker panel.
I have 200A service, and a panel rated for 200A. As an all-electric home in Phoenix with a pool and jacuzzi, you can imagine that I inconvenience a lot of electrons. My panel has 20 spaces for breakers, and I currently have 30 in there using one tandem 240V and 5 tandem 120V breakers. As an amateur, swapping one of the existing 240V breakers for another tandem in order to add another 50A circuit is easy - but I don't know if it's a good idea.
I used a couple of different online load calculation worksheets to see where I stand; they all give results in the range of 260 amps.
Q: Is this a problem for an existing 200A panel?
Q: 220 amp panels seem to be the largest residential panels that are easily acquired; 400 A are available, but price goes up from $150-$200 to $800. Ouch. Do such things as 300A panels exist?
I don't have any problems with breakers tripping at this point because my loads are heavily timed due to a time-of-use electrical plan. My water heater is only allowed to run from 7:00PM to noon, my Jacuzzi runs at 9:00PM, my Pool runs at midnight. EV charging would be slotted in here also, probably running from 1:00 AM to 7:00 AM or so. This would keep me from hitting 200A in real-life, but I'm not sure that the NEC recognizes timed loads - certainly none of the online calculators allow that.
Any help out there? I wasn't sure whether to post this here, or in "charging infrastructure" but that forum seems to mostly deal with public chargers...