An Electrical Panel is a large metal box that houses the different components operating your electrical system. It’s typically installed in a garage or basement, and it contains the circuit breakers (or fuses) that power up all of your appliances, lighting, and electronics. The Electrical Panel is a crucial part of any home or office, but it can also be a dangerous one if you don’t understand how it works.
If you’re considering adding an appliance or rewiring your house, it’s important to know how much space is available in your service panel. This can help you determine whether it’s worth putting in the extra work, or whether your current service is adequate. You can find out how many spaces are available by opening the cover and looking for circuit breaker spaces. Most panels have multiple spaces, so you can add a new breaker without having to remove an existing one.
If you have an older home, it’s possible that your service panel is full of breaker slots. This means that you may need to have an electrician install a new sub-panel to add more circuits, or you might need to move the existing breaker slots into tandem breakers to fit in more slots. Tandem circuit breakers are similar to regular ones, but they’re able to serve two appliances in the same slot and allow more circuits to be added. You can tell if your service panel has tandem breakers by checking for the metal knock-outs.