How is it that my main breaker is 100 amp service, and it supplies power to a subpanel that has over 200 amps worth of circuit breakers? That is, if each breaker were pulling the maximum amperage, how does this work? Would the main breaker not trip?
I've got lots of other questions. Is this the best newsgroup for electrical type questions?
TIA
Boris
It is called load diversity. They know you will never have all the circuits going at 100% at one time but they want the capability for any one of them to do it separately. They should have done a load calculation based on several factors in your home to decide what size service you have.
It would trip.
Yes. My brother and I know everything there is to know about electrical questions.
Yes
I am an electrical professional.
I am sorry to announce that you only have one choice. Demolish your house and rebuild from scratch.
Except that you normally don't find breakers in a fuse box.
Don't despair. You learn something new every day.
This used to be a decent place for such questions and on occasion still is. However, you have to be careful here as you on any unknown web site - there are trolls, intentional misinformationists, and plain out louts now too, so try to be sure you sort out the dumb stuff from the real. gfretwell & Harry gave decent answers; I didn't read any further.
That's one of the things my brother knows.
"Twayne" wrote in news:im4vgt$4gh$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:
Yep. I used to participate in this ng, and this is my first time back in a few years. I was surprised to see so many smart-ass posts in so many threads. Lots of trolls and one-up-manship going on in many of the threads with the not at all funny jokes and puns. I've seen this happen in lots of formerly respected ngs. Eventually, the knowledgeable and helpful members (yeah, for those tempted...I know there no such thing as a member in a ng) stop participating.
But, that's ok. I can separate the wheat from the chaff.
I think the worlds troubles are wierding people out, what with 3 wars and a nuke meltdown. so I apologize for the others who just cant help themselves:(
On another note I have tripped a 100 amp main in the past:( widow ACs and the machnes I service put us in darkness:(
its rare but can occur, if you ever upgrade go 200 amps, but dont worry about it if your not tripping the main
Dude, that's not a fuse box, it's a PIANO. If you look carefully, you'll see smaller black "breakers" in between some of the larger ivory ones.
And besides that, fuse boxes dont contain breakers....
You better get yourself to bed, you'll need to get to your kindergarten class early in the morning. You need all the education you can get.
You used to be able to get breakers that go in a fusebox. Round things with edison base and a push button.
[snip]
Assuming you are asking about a typical residential or light commercial split-phase center tapped electrical service:
Each "leg" of your service is providing 100 amps on its wire to your main breaker... Therefore you have 200 amps of power when you add up both "legs" of your service... As long as your service panel loads are properly balanced so that you aren't drawing more than 100 amps off any single "leg" at any time you can have 200 total amps of circuits fed from such a panel...
The explanation offered by other people here saying that each circuit in your panel is not running at maximum capacity explains why you can have slightly more than 200 amps of circuits installed without tripping the main breaker...
This is the simple explanation without going into crazy details about types of loads: capacitive, inductive or resistive or considering the power factors of those different types of loads...
~~ Evan
Interestingly electrons don't travel at anything remotely approachng that speed in wire. In fact at 60 hz which has an electron traveling in one direction for 1/60th of a second they only move a very small amount. The reason that electricity appears instantaniously at the other end of wire is the wave effect.
jamesgangnc wrote in news:f017151d-f8aa-4a37- snipped-for-privacy@a21g2000prj.googlegroups.com:
Never knew that. Interesting. Is this for both AC and DC, or AC only? Do you know the actual distance or speed of travel in residential systems, or transmission grids?
Thanks.
This is mostly just theory gee whiz info. From any practical sense the power is available at the other end of the wire at roughly a foot per nanosecond. You can see it on a scope, set up for TDR.
Yes, but that is not electrons that left the switch. That is the wave effect causing the movement of electrons at the other end. In other words that is the speed of the wave, not the speed of the electrons.
Hi, Remember earth day!!!! If nothing pops what is the worry?
In ac the electrons are reversing course every 1/60th of a second. So they never really go much of anywhere. The electrons in your house wiring are pretty much the same electrons that have been in it since it was first built. In dc the electron goes in one direction as long as the circuit is complete. But the rate of travel is very slow. I believe it takes hours and hours for an electron to move just a few feet. I know that some of us (at least me anyway) have probably imagined hords of electrons racing through what ever device is being powered. But that's simply not the case.
Cleaning old electrons out of house wiring? :-) Yep, getting those old eletrons out would improve the efficiency of your house wiring. Allowing new, fresh electrons to flow easily through your wires and appliances. Testing by an independent testing firm revealed as much as 20% improved electron flow after servicing. Also try our auto service designed specially for 12 volt systems. Get 15% off if you buy both now.
jamesgangnc wrote in news:9fc04f83-0189-4d19-bb59- snipped-for-privacy@i35g2000prd.googlegroups.com:
My favorite tool, which is similar in nature to what you are suggesting, is the hard drive balancer and the pipe scrubber:
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