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Existing 100A service and main panel from PG&E here in California.

Planning for a future detatched ADU to be built potentially years down the road. What I'm going to do now is relocate the service to a new pole in the backyard, and replace the single meter with a dual-meter panel. What I'm trying to figure out is whether to go 200A and have only 100A for the existing house and 100A for the future house, or go >200A and have whatever capacity I'll realistically need for a 10kW solar system AND the two houses. If I do 200A, the single 100A side will only be able to support a small solar system, so I need to go bigger than 200A I believe.

This means PG&E will have to increase the size of their service drop, although they say that with no additional load the wire won't have to be any bigger...for now.

So, my question for you folks is, what are my options for a dual meter panel greater than 200A, which I assume I'll have to do in order to accomodate a 100A house, a 10kW solar system, and a future small house.

Thank you.

  • Are you sure you really need more than 200 A? Have you done a load calculation? – Abe Karplus Jan 21 '23 at 05:57
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    Why do you think you need more amps for a solar system? **Solar *subtracts* from your service demand**. If you have a 200A house and 160A solar, you don't need 360 amps of service! You need (best case) 40A of service and (worst case) 200A of service. So 200A will suffice. The reason to think about 400A for house+ADU is electrification of appliances. e.g. a house that doesn't even have gas plumbed into it, which some cities are starting to codify. (Carmel Indiana did it in the 60s). – Harper - Reinstate Monica Jan 21 '23 at 08:15
  • What is the square footage of the existing house, and what square footage are you planning the ADU to be? – ThreePhaseEel Jan 21 '23 at 15:26
  • Existing house is small, like 900 sq ft. A new ADU would be a much bigger house but still I don’t know, 2500 sq ft. Gas is nearby but I’d rather use electric everything. Imagine 100A to the new ADU. A dryer and AC and car charger would eat that up pretty quickly. Let alone hot water heater, oven, etc. – blackmountain Jan 22 '23 at 05:57
  • @blackmountain -- I'm going to assume the new building will become the primary dwelling unit with the existing unit flipped into the ADU for purposes of this discussion (this'll make it a bit easier/more standard to talk about), first off. Second, is it OK if the solar is net metered with the "house" loads, or would you want to virtually net meter the property instead? (makes a difference in complexity here) – ThreePhaseEel Jan 27 '23 at 03:50
  • @ThreePhaseEel I believe the new building will be the ADU and I won’t have a choice about that. Pretty sure that’s what the county told me. Plan is the 2nd meter spot will be glassed off and the solar will net meter the existing house. Later on, it will be switched to net metering aggregation which allows for two adjacent properties to share one solar system. What I need to sort out is the panel (and pole) itself. I guess it just needs two 200 amp breakers and everything else I can use subpanels for. – blackmountain Jan 28 '23 at 04:22
  • @blackmountain -- is your existing meter on a pole, or on the existing house? And I understand where the county's coming from legally speaking at least, even if it does sound odd. Also, I suspect that a multifamily property won't be eligible for net metering aggregation since the other account will be in the other occupant's name -- you'd need Virtual Net Metering instead, which requires a meter dedicated to solar production – ThreePhaseEel Jan 28 '23 at 04:32
  • @ThreePhaseEel existing single meter 100 amp panel is on the front of the house. I am going to be installing a new pole behind the house, and having PG&E run a new drop to the pole. I have already confirmed with them that I will not trigger a new net metering agreement later on if I am not changing the system itself, but simply adding another meter on with which the solar production will be shared. That is how their net metering agreement works. Two adjacent properties using the same solar system. Whether or not they need to be in the same name doesn’t really matter to me, I can put the tenant – blackmountain Jan 28 '23 at 16:00
  • @ThreePhaseEel looks like I got cut off. Anyway, I can always put their utility account in my name if I need to but I’m not concerned about that. One service drop going into a 2 meter panel and then either separately or contained the ability to distribute one or more circuits from each meter. What just seems completely outrageous is the range of prices for such a panel. – blackmountain Jan 28 '23 at 16:02
  • @blackmountain -- I take it from the word "drop" that your new service will be overhead, not underground? Also, are you at all interested in the special EV charging rates? (I ask because having the EV charging on its own meter might let us use less costly equipment here) – ThreePhaseEel Jan 28 '23 at 16:43
  • @ThreePhaseEel Yes, overhead. The existing house/tenants have no interest or ability to have an electric car. They just need one 100 amp breaker to feed their subpanel which all of the house’s circuits run from. If I ever build on the property then I might want to charge but at this poly I’m just trying to nail down the equipment I need. Ideally it would have two meters and two 200 amp breakers, then I can use adjacent subpanels to distribute it. – blackmountain Jan 29 '23 at 05:20
  • @blackmountain -- do you have, or plan to install, any *freestanding* (i.e. not attached to the existing house or the planned ADU) outdoor lighting on the property? – ThreePhaseEel Jan 29 '23 at 16:48
  • @ThreePhaseEel you are killing me. What does that have to do with anything? No I don’t. We are talking about a very small old farmhouse on an orchard. The house itself doesn’t have a lot of draw, but the idea is that I want to plug solar into it. I think what I need to do is make a diagram and post it. Give me an hour. thank you. – blackmountain Jan 29 '23 at 17:01
  • @blackmountain -- the reason for the question about outdoor lighting is it determines if you need a third meter or not (as it'd be a commons area load, and NEC 210.25(B) prohibits putting those on a tenant's equipment) – ThreePhaseEel Jan 29 '23 at 17:04
  • @ThreePhaseEel No outdoor lighting, no third meter. – blackmountain Jan 29 '23 at 18:50

1 Answers1

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Fortunately, you only need two

Sometimes, a two-dwelling-unit property will require three meters, as NEC 210.25(B) prohibits having loads that are common to both (all) tenants (such as an apartment building's fire alarm system, a shared laundry area, or exit lighting in a corridor or shared stair) run from a tenant's electrical service equipment, and many places prohibit this as well as a function of landlord-tenant law. Fortunately, in your situation where you have two detached dwelling units on the same property, the only plausible shared load would be freestanding (i.e. not attached to one house or the other) outdoor lighting, and since you don't have any of that, a two-meter pack will work for your application.

As far as specific hardware goes, the most cost-effective thing I've been able to find for this job is the Siemens WEP4212 -- at the time of this posting, you should be able to get one for somewhere around $1000 through your local electrical supply house (perhaps less, perhaps somewhat more).

Mounting this thing

Unfortunately, you'll have to work with PG&E to rearrange your electrical service into what's called an "underground service dip". This is because PG&E document 025055 prohibits service equipment larger than 225A, or any multi-meter equipment, from being pole-mounted; instead, you'll have to "dip" the service underground to an adjacent location where a suitable mounting arrangement (backerboard or horizontal struts, with pipe or timber supports) can be installed.

The aboveground (mast) section of conduit on the existing pole will need to be 2&frac12"; galvanized rigid metal conduit with a mating weatherhead, as PG&E does not accept PVC or EMT for service mast duty; it is permissible to run Schedule 40 PVC once past the sweep from the pole into the trench though. Once this is done, PG&E will run its conductors from the existing service point, through the conduit, to the pull section in the new service equipment.

Getting grounded

You'll also need to run a grounding electrode system at the meter rack. This consists of two 8' ground rods driven 6-8' apart and connected to each other and to the meter-pack hardware by a 2AWG grounding wire. You may need to use a length of &frac34"; rigid steel conduit with Bridgeport MCH-075 grounding hubs at each end as a damage shield for the aboveground section of the grounding wire, as well. If not, you can use a Bridgeport MC-075 to bring the grounding conductor into the box; either way, you'll want to punch or otherwise cut a ¾" trade size knockout (1⅛" actual hole size) in the bottom of the meter-main, below the center compartment that contains the grounding wire lugs, as service grounding fittings and concentric knockouts don't mix very well.

Homeward bound

The wiring from this meter-pack to the homes in question will be a 4-wire feeder -- fortunately, mobile home feeder cable is a readily available and inexpensive solution to this problem, as NEC 310.12 applies to individual dwelling unit feeders in a multifamily property. Protecting this wire will require a 200A QS and a 100A QP breaker of the appropriate interrupting rating for your location, something you'll have to ask PG&E about since they don't publish any guarantees on that for non-single-family properties.

Once you reach each individual unit, you'll then be able to land the wire into a main breaker subpanel of the appropriate rating and size -- I'd recommend a 30 space, 125A panel as a replacement panel for the existing home if the main panel there cannot be converted to a subpanel by pulling the bonding screw and moving the existing grounding wires to a new, separate grounding bar, while the new home will get a 40 or 42 space, 200 or 225A panel fitted.

ThreePhaseEel
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  • Wow man, that's a great response, thank you. I tried upvoting it but evidently I'm too new of a user. I really appreciate the info. That part about dipping the service underground is interesting, I hadn't thought of that. I wasn't actually considering mounting anything on the pole but I hadn't really throught through how I was going to wire from the pole to the free-standing meter support setup. – blackmountain Jan 29 '23 at 20:03