Does my electrical panel need to be better balanced?

putStrLnName · Aug 20, 2021

I recently had someone install a 50 A inlet connected to a 50 A circuit breaker on my electrical panel.

I had some issues with the job he did.

At first, he installed an outlet, and I had to make him come back to install the inlet. Then I realized that he didn’t install an interlock kit, which I’m trying to install myself now.

I’m going to have to move some breakers around to install the interlock kit and just want to make sure that the load is properly balanced.

As is, I’ve got 100 A on one side and 320 A on the other, which doesn’t sound good to me. (But hey, I’m new to this stuff.) Right now, I’ve also got the 50 A breaker for the generator inlet on the 100 A side. And my guess (again, being new to this) is that this would mean the total power on the 100 A side would go down to 50 A because the generator is putting power into the system. That would mean 100 A - 50 A = 50 A vs 320 A, which sounds really bad.

There is a way I can rearrange the breakers so that I have 180 A on one side and 220 A on the other side as well as the 50 A generator breaker on the 220 A side. Would this be a better setup? Is there a better one available? Is it important that I fix this soon? Is it a serious problem the way it’s currently setup?

The panel is 200 A by the way.

Thanks in advance

[ElectriciansForums.net] Does my electrical panel need to be better balanced?

Megawatt · Aug 21, 2021

putStrLnName said:
I recently had someone install a 50 A inlet connected to a 50 A circuit breaker on my electrical panel.

I had some issues with the job he did.

At first, he installed an outlet, and I had to make him come back to install the inlet. Then I realized that he didn’t install an interlock kit, which I’m trying to install myself now.

I’m going to have to move some breakers around to install the interlock kit and just want to make sure that the load is properly balanced.

As is, I’ve got 100 A on one side and 320 A on the other, which doesn’t sound good to me. (But hey, I’m new to this stuff.) Right now, I’ve also got the 50 A breaker for the generator inlet on the 100 A side. And my guess (again, being new to this) is that this would mean the total power on the 100 A side would go down to 50 A because the generator is putting power into the system. That would mean 100 A - 50 A = 50 A vs 320 A, which sounds really bad.

There is a way I can rearrange the breakers so that I have 180 A on one side and 220 A on the other side as well as the 50 A generator breaker on the 220 A side. Would this be a better setup? Is there a better one available? Is it important that I fix this soon? Is it a serious problem the way it’s currently setup?

The panel is 200 A by the way.

Thanks in advanceView attachment 88931

From your picture I don’t see a problem and what are you talking about 320 on one side and 220 on the other side. It really don’t matter what side you install your 50 amp breaker. Please don’t add up breaker size and worry that it’s overloaded, I will put it this way, you have 2 different things going on and the first one is that the breakers in your panel are called your calculated load and the other is the actual connected load. As far as one side or the other is the way the panel is designed every other breaker is on different phases. Normally we count the left side as 1/3/5/7/9 etc. from top to bottom and the right side is 2/4/6/8/10 etc.

putStrLnName · Aug 21, 2021

Megawatt said:
From your picture I don’t see a problem and what are you talking about 320 on one side and 220 on the other side. It really don’t matter what side you install your 50 amp breaker. Please don’t add up breaker size and worry that it’s overloaded, I will put it this way, you have 2 different things going on and the first one is that the breakers in your panel are called your calculated load and the other is the actual connected load. As far as one side or the other is the way the panel is designed every other breaker is on different phases. Normally we count the left side as 1/3/5/7/9 etc. from top to bottom and the right side is 2/4/6/8/10 etc.

Thanks. So I can rearrange the breakers however I like to get the 50 A breaker close enough to the main breaker for the interlock kit? My impression was that each side of the electric panel had to have the same ampage, but like I said, I have very little knowledge in this area, so not sure. Thanks again.