Electrician Explains How Circuit Breakers And Electrical Panels Work

What's going on guys This is Dustin Stelzer with another episode of electrician you and today we're gonna talk of breakers and how breakers actually work Alright so today we've got two sub panels and in these sub panels are a bunch of breakers These are the two sub panels Sorry, I can't keep the damn doors open the wind's blowing down here but you get the idea so Each one these sub panels has a main (main breaker but we call it a Main) and then it has a whole bunch of other branch circuits This panel is pretty much all Furnaces, air conditioners, water heater, washer, dryer, stove, stuff like that So I don't like to put arc-fault stuff outside especially like being down here by the ocean Things corrode in anything with electronics in it I just try not to keep any of that stuff on the outside, a good old boy electrician taught me that one It's actually a really good idea. So anything that's non arc fault, any exterior weatherproof circuits, Any appliances, or anything that fits in the house that's not supposed to be arc-fault is out in this panel. So let's look at this for a second somebody asked me a question recently on YouTube they said how do breakers actually work like do Breakers put power out, you know, does this 60 amp breaker push 60 amps of electricity out? The answer is no. So the way that you have to think about electrical systems is that you have a difference of potential between these two hots. If I were to connect these two hots right now, SO MUCH electricity (So many electrons) would run through these two wires and they go straight out to the utility There's a little transformer out there, but so many amps would fly through those wires at a given time that they would fucking explode. It would be a massive amount of energy that would be released. Power always travels from the source at the utility All the way to the house and then back out to the source So what we do is when we add all of these other (branch circuit) wires We're bringing wires out to specific loads and the very nature of a load is that it slows electricity down There's resistance in it or there's inductance or there's capacitance. There's something in that circuit that slows the electricity down. So essentially all we're doing in a panel is we're connecting this wire to that wire but instead of directly connecting them We're connecting them through equipment and the equipment has enough resistance in it, or has motors and has a winding of wire That it slows electricity way way way down So we put breakers in here. Breakers are just little switches essentially like you turn this on and turn it off It's just like a normal switch that you would have on a wall But the cool thing about the breakers is that breakers can sense a certain current you'll through them inside of them. They have electromagnet and The bigger breaker is like a 60 here or like this one's a 125 These bigger breakers the magnets inside of them are a lot stronger so a certain amount of amperage running through an electromagnet is gonna suck that electromagnet away or it's gonna close it It's gonna to open or close the circuit. So breakers are really just ways to stop the Current flow from these conductors all the way through these bus tabs. So right now, we would have power going through here. This is 40 amps Let's just say that this is an air conditioner. So current is going through here all the way to the air conditioner that air conditioner is turned on so power is traveling very very slowly through this circuit, but for some reason if in that air conditioner There's a short Well that shorts gonna make a whole shitload of current go fly through the circuit just like it would if we connect with these two Wires, so if that were to happen, we would have like an explosive amount of energy you would catch things on fire you know melt the equipment so we put a breaker in that's rated at a certain amperage so that it can handle a Short when a short happens this thing just trips in the off position Because it's a 40 amp it can handle up to 40 amps before it automatically trips and disconnects so breakers Don't put out any power how power happens is by connecting this line to this line or this line to this line But again, if we just like directly connect those wires, it's gonna fucking blow up So we have to put a load in between those wires of some sort to be able to slow the current down and make it useful so That's all we're doing with a house is we're putting a whole bunch of wires everywhere that have specific loads on them And that slows the current flow down and if something were to happen We need to have a device in here of some sort that can cut power off in case of an emergency if some or say a piece of equipment burns up, but it keeps running. It's gonna draw a lot of amperage And so we need something that can automatically without us being around detect like "hey, there's a fucking problem" Boom and it just shuts the circuit of So that's that breakers are, just safety devices that kill power When there's a problem, they don't put any power out They just allow power to go through them until there's a problem then when there's a problem. Boom, they disconnect. So that's how breakers work Or that's why we have breakers. I have another video if you guys are interested on what's actually inside of a breaker I would check that out if you're at all interested But hope you guys enjoyed it leave some comments below subscribe if you like this stuff and I will see you in the next episode

Channel: Electrician U

Views: 281,313

Keywords: electrician, electrical, electricity, apprentice, journeyman, master, electrical vlog, electrician vlog, electrical videos, electrician videos, electrical show, electrician show, electrician u, dustin stelzer, panels, electrical panels, circuit breakers, how circuit breakers work, how electrical panels work, breaker panel, circuit breaker, mcb

Id: t2de7A2d3gE

Length: 6min 33sec (393 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 26 2018