Mustang Mach-E

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Originally Posted by robg

Sounds like you’re still eligible:

excellent!

[Terri Kennedy]

Originally Posted by ZBB

The main panel was already full, and a sub-panel had been installed next to it that only had a couple open slots. I was worried about overloading the house and never called an electrician for an estimate...

15+ years or ago, I decided I needed to get rid of the ticking time bombs that were my Federal Pacific breaker panels. I got quotes from a number of electricians and all were insanely high based on my known costs for the materials and the estimated labor hours. Finally I said the heck with it and decided to do it myself. Upgraded the service from dual 100A to dual 200A with a 100A sub-panel:





As you can see from the paint outlines in the second picture, the Flaming Pacific panels were not the original ones on the house - I think the original service was with an A-base meter. The FP panels were on the backboard extension with the yellow paint. The oldest wiring in the house (with a single horizontal outlet per room) goes to a 2-circuit fuse box on each floor, with both the hot and neutral fused. More modern wiring went to the FP panels with no intervening fusing. Which, given FP's history, probably was a bad idea.

I got the new panels mounted on a new backboard and the conduit cut, bent and threaded in advance. Then, under the cover of darkness on 2 consecutive nights the 1st floor and then the 2nd floor were moved over to the new panels.

The second picture with the digital meters was taken a few years later - those are fancy ones that change the display to "TAMPER" if you pull the meter from the base. When I did the swap-out I still had the spinning-disc mechanical meters so nobody noticed anything.

I posted these pics quite a few years ago on a wiring forum and got told they were "electrician porn".

Edited to add: For those not "in the know", the 2 larger panels are Square D QO series 40-position panels. The one in the middle is their smaller 100A main lug cousin. Square D is probably the best residential / light commercial panel you can get. Which is odd, because their parent company Schneider also owns Federal Pacific (Federal Pioneer in Canada).

[lemming]

Originally Posted by Terri Kennedy

15+ years or ago, I decided I needed to get rid of the ticking time bombs that were my Federal Pacific breaker panels. I got quotes from a number of electricians and all were insanely high based on my known costs for the materials and the estimated labor hours. Finally I said the heck with it and decided to do it myself. Upgraded the service from dual 100A to dual 200A with a 100A sub-panel:





As you can see from the paint outlines in the second picture, the Flaming Pacific panels were not the original ones on the house - I think the original service was with an A-base meter. The FP panels were on the backboard extension with the yellow paint. The oldest wiring in the house (with a single horizontal outlet per room) goes to a 2-circuit fuse box on each floor, with both the hot and neutral fused. More modern wiring went to the FP panels with no intervening fusing. Which, given FP's history, probably was a bad idea.

I got the new panels mounted on a new backboard and the conduit cut, bent and threaded in advance. Then, under the cover of darkness on 2 consecutive nights the 1st floor and then the 2nd floor were moved over to the new panels.

The second picture with the digital meters was taken a few years later - those are fancy ones that change the display to "TAMPER" if you pull the meter from the base. When I did the swap-out I still had the spinning-disc mechanical meters so nobody noticed anything.

I posted these pics quite a few years ago on a wiring forum and got told they were "electrician porn".

Edited to add: For those not "in the know", the 2 larger panels are Square D QO series 40-position panels. The one in the middle is their smaller 100A main lug cousin. Square D is probably the best residential / light commercial panel you can get. Which is odd, because their parent company Schneider also owns Federal Pacific (Federal Pioneer in Canada).

What are the three small devices that look like voltmeters that are positioned under the box labeled “common areas”?

Can’t tell what their output is saying.

[Terri Kennedy]

Originally Posted by lemming

What are the three small devices that look like voltmeters that are positioned under the box labeled “common areas”?

Can’t tell what their output is saying.

They're displays for current transformers on the feeder leads for the 3 panels. They display electric consumption in KWh and projected cost. They were less useful than I had hoped, for a number of reasons:

1) They are designed for 120/240V, while my power is 120/208V (I'm on a 3-phase block).

2) There is no way to program them with the consumption-based rate that my utility uses (a series of steps that decrease the rate per KWh as you use more power, but then increase as you continue to use more power).

3) There was no way to synchronize their sample cycle with the somewhat-random billing cycle.

I added them because I got a 7MWh bill one month - the spinning-disc meters didn't have remote reading capabilities and they kept using estimated readings. I would have paid it as I used that much power, but the utility tried a bunch of sneaky tricks - they waited until after a big rate increase and then billed it as if it all happened in the month after the increase. Remember what I said about the sliding-scale rate climbing after some usage amount?

I didn't get anywhere with the utility, so I went to the Public Utility Commission and filed a complaint in person. They negotiated with the utility to allocate the usage evenly across the 26 months or so of estimated readings, so it avoided the rate increase and the ever-increasing charge per KWh in each cycle. The utility called me up and said "Would you like this spread out evenly over the next 26 billing cycles at 0% interest?" and I said no, I'd pay it all up-front - I just objected to the way they were trying to maximize their profit by trying to bill it all after a rate increase as if it was all used that month.

That was part of an ongoing series of metering issues. I'd had one or both meters pulled by the utility at various times because I complained that they were reading high. I'd get a form letter each time saying "Our meter shop has examined your meter #12345 and found it to be performing properly." But a billing cycle or 2 later, there would be a credit on my bill for anywhere from $800 to $3000 to correct "reading anomalies".

Part of the problem was their use of 120/240V mechanical meters for a 120/208V service. There are inaccuracies introduced due to the phase angle difference between the 2 hot legs on those 2 types of service. Once they switched to the digital meters (with remote reading) all those problems went away. So those monitoring devices are just sitting there displaying meaningless numbers. The only reason I didn't take them down is they have solid current transformers on the feeders instead of split ones, so I'd need to disconnect the feeders to get them off.

[John V]

What's with all the FMC? Code requirement in your area?

[Nick M3]

Originally Posted by John V

What's with all the FMC? Code requirement in your area?

Less effort than hard conduit, presumably.

Edit: And Romex is not supposed to be exposed.

[Alan]

Originally Posted by Terri Kennedy

15+ years or ago, I decided I needed to get rid of the ticking time bombs that were my Federal Pacific breaker panels. I got quotes from a number of electricians and all were insanely high based on my known costs for the materials and the estimated labor hours. Finally I said the heck with it and decided to do it myself. Upgraded the service from dual 100A to dual 200A with a 100A sub-panel

Is this for a 1 family home or is it a Multiple family home ?

500 amp total is tremendous

[lip277]

I agree - the pics Terri has above are great.
I have 200A service in each of the house and shop. The house takes its feed from the transformer on the street. The shop is back far enough from the road that it (evidently) needs its own transformer about 2/3's of the way down my driveway. VERY nice to have that kind of power available - at least in the shop. I have really used that capability with the shop remodel.

[Nick M3]

Originally Posted by Alan

Is this for a 1 family home or is it a Multiple family home ?

500 amp total is tremendous

I mean, the sub-panel comes out of the 400 total. It's dual 200 service.

Nominally, we have 400A service at Doom, but they only installed a CL200 meter.

[John V]

Originally Posted by Nick M3

Less effort than hard conduit, presumably.

Edit: And Romex is not supposed to be exposed.

For residential around here at least, I've never seen anything other than Romex coming out of the panel, other than in pole barn type buildings where there are no finished walls, in which case metallic hard conduit is used. Just wondering if it's a code thing for her area. It's much easier to do Romex in a tidy fashion than it is with FMC