Bonus Information

Main Service Panel Variations

You may encounter a wide variety of Main Service Panels during Site Assessment or when
doing the actual solar system installation. Here are some examples of the range of designs and
some issues to be aware of.

Integral Meter Bottom Fed

This is the style that

we have in our
courses. It has the
meter on the side,
and it has the main
breaker at the bottom
of the busbar.

This particular model

can accommodate 20
full size breakers and
can allow 40 circuits
(using tandem
breakers).

It has the neutral and

ground bar as just
one unified unit.

And it has dual wires

to dual breakers in
the main, for
redundancy.
Integral Meter Center Fed Solar Ready

Here is an example of a service panel that is truly

‘solar ready’. It has a dedicated slot for a 60 amp
240 VAC solar breaker at the very top which is wired
SEPARATELY into the utility (left) side of the panel.
The two wires to the solar breaker location are
connected BEFORE the main breaker, eliminating
any problems or concerns about the sizing of the
solar breaker compared to the main breaker and
busbar rating. This style of panel is fantastic for solar
installs.

There is one issue with this particular model. It is

‘center fed’, which means the main breaker is
located roughly in the center of the busbar, not at the
end. This design caused concerns in some
jurisdictions with their interpretation of the NEC to
have the solar breaker located ‘opposite’ to the
location of the main breaker — however that source
of confusion has been explicitly cleared up in the
2017 NEC edition.
Integral Meter Center Fed Solar Ready

Here is another example of a panel that is

truly ‘solar ready’, with a dedicated slot for
the solar breaker that is wired into the
meter socket before the main breaker.

In this model however, there are only

single conductors going from the socket to
the main breaker, which is pretty normal.

And once again, this panel would be

considered ‘center fed’, as the main
breaker is not located at the far end of the
busbar but is more in the middle.
Integral Meter Top Fed Solar Ready

Here is an example where the meter socket is not

on the side but at the top.

And the main breaker is at the top of the busbar.

Here again, this is truly ‘solar ready’ with a

dedicated slot for a solar breaker wired into the
socket before the main breaker.
Separate Meter

Here are a couple examples of the utility

meter being separated from the main breaker
and busbar enclosure.

This is quite common where you might have

the panel down in a basement or inside the
house somewhere, and the utility meter is
installed outside the house so it can be read
by the utility company.

This arrangement is great if you are installing

home energy monitoring equipment, and
need to place a current transformer (CT)
‘donut’ around the L1 and L2 main utility
wires coming into the main breaker! They are
easily access at the top of the panel with
plenty of room for the CTs.