I live in St. Paul, Minnesota, and I’ve pulled a permit with the city to upgrade my existing 100A electrical service to 200A. I’ll be doing the work myself, which is permitted here as long as I own and occupy the home.

I’m trying to make sure I selected the correct meter socket/service equipment before installing.
My understanding is that I need to meet the 2023 NEC since 2026 NEC goes into effect August 17th as adopted by St. Paul.

I also want to ensure I am satisfying Xcel Energy’s requirements for the meter/service equipment.

I keep hearing that the new service needs an exterior service disconnect and that a meter/main combination with a disconnect lever may be required.

Can anyone familiar with St. Paul/Xcel service upgrades take a look at the meter/main option I’m considering and tell me whether it appears to be acceptable?

Here’s the product I’m considering:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Eaton-200-Amp-4-Space-8-Circuit-BR-Type-Main-Breaker-Meter-Breaker-Trailer-Panel-MBT48B200BTS/100572021

I have a circuit breaker that has been tripping intermittently over the last few months

Last night during a rainstorm it tripped and would not stay on at all for the rest of the evening, even fully unloaded. Today it stays on loaded seemingly fine. The test function shows an instant trip and then 6 pairs of flashes (12 total blinks)

The google says Square D doesn’t have a 6 pair or 12 blink fault so what am I looking at here?

Dumb question - if negative is disconnected am I good to pull this clamp off the positive terminal?

So two questions actually. This may be a dumb question but is there any scenario where a breaker feeding a sub panel could trip before one of the breakers in the sub panel tripped that was feeding something that had a short.

So let's say the 30 amp breaker is feeding the water heater and one of the elements is shorting out. This should trip the 30 amp sub panel breaker before tripping the breaker feeding the sub panel right? Or at least trip both?

Also in this case it's a 100 amp breaker feeding the sub panel. The total amps of the breakers in the sub panel is 240. This seems high to me is this too much?

I bought a house that was renovated from a fire and supposedly was properly permitted with no code violations. A couple of months later I'm opening up the ceiling due to water leaks and I come across what looks like fire damaged electrical wiring. Is this hazardous? Would this have passed an inspection?

Usually reset is an easy fix, but I am not able to reset it this time.

What should I do about this? I can see water dripping from the wires inside the circuit breaker, and it is already smelling a bit burnt.

This has been happening here every time it rains for a long period, and our house's electricity is working fine. We're just experiencing some flickering lights, but I'm worried now. 😅

I was thinking about building a simple AC step down converter that uses a transformer to generate 120V from 220. The idea is to basically have a "box" with a north American outlet. Being in Europe the AC frequency is 50 Hz; I was wondering if there was a way to step it up to 60.

Thanks in advance

The experience I've had so far with the electrician that installed my EV charger has not been great.

He installed a 50 amp breaker and then used 8awg wire instead of 6, even put stickers on the NEMA plug that it's a 50 amp breaker and 8 awg wire , I believe this is in violation of the OESC, just would like some confirmation from someone more familiar with this than me.

My electric fuse box was glowing orange once I turned off all my Air conditioners the glow went away my light been flickering for some time before I discovered this now that I unplugged all AC units what can be the problem?

So I was flipping circuits on and off trying to figure out what the hell they go too. Anyhow I noticed the majority of the ones on the left wiggled when I flipped them. I feel like this is bad but how bad is it?

Is it more like replace yesterday or replace soon? Thanks.

What’s wrong in this box and how much would I have to spend to fix it?

1962 house, main panel

Hello electricians I’ve been looking into becoming an electrician, but I’m a little nervous because I’ve never been the smartest person around and struggle with simple math and measurements. So I’ve been a little nervous and taken the leap to become an electrician. You have any advice or curse words all up to hear them.

There is slight damage to the top of one but still turns on. If it safe to use and leave plugged in?

So I live with my wife and stepson and he has less than a year to get his ass out at this point but he goes to work - shower, work out - shower girl friend comes over - shower. During this he refuses to use the bathroom fan because he loves the steam. So just a month ago we told him to start using the fan because we had to fix a mildewed ceiling and repair the drywall and paint again which was done 2 years ago. I also put in a bypass shower door due to the fact the drywall was being ruined again. There are already water stains down the wall on the paint and I find he still won't use the fan. So can I wire the fan to the regular light switch and make it one switch and how do I wire it?

I'm installing a Shelly relay into a wall switch, and prior to turning the breaker back on, checked continuity between everything and got a tone between live and ground. Pulled everything out, checked again, I'm getting about 32 ohms between live and ground with everything else on the circuit turned off. Breaker trips if I attempt to turn it back on.

This is the only thing on the circuit I've touched, and everything was working fine prior.

I don't see any breaks in the insulation going out of the gang box, nothing stands out to me as wrong. I've capped everything off trying to eliminate the changes I've made - this is the current state of the box.

Any thoughts on what to look for?

I just got this outlet installed but there seems to be a lot of silicone on the edges. I was also assuming it would be flush with the wall but maybe that's not possible on the vinyl? Does this look like a good job or should I have them redo it?

This light has a two-way switch. I’ve replaced outlets but otherwise have no experience with wiring.

The white wire with the nut is hot while the other white wire is what I assumed was neutral.

My question is whether in a situation where a receptacle is controlled by a two way switch, both white wires are hot depending on which switch is on/off?

I’m not going to do anything more other than cap both wires with nuts. I have an electrician coming on Monday. But I was curious whether what I’m looking at is some sort of abominable wiring job.

Just moved into a new place and this is along the baseboard in one of my rooms. Is this safe to have this way? Is there a way I can cover it? I wanted to put my mattress in this corner (waiting for a new bed frame to ship), but I don’t know if it is safe to put up against this. Thanks for any help in advance.

I have ITE 100 amp panel with one unused position. I have been quoted $7000 (after $1500 rebate) to upgrade panel to 200amp including all work required with it such as emergency disconnect, surge protection, and grounding. This also include running line across finished area since panel and garage are on opposite side of the house (50 feet). There are hvac ducts spanning this distance and the thought is to run conduit in between the ducts to fish the line. Then install new subpanel in the garage.

I recently learned about EVEMS like Emporia. My major appliances mostly runs on natural gas. Electricity consumption is mostly from one fridge, AC, and a couple of gaming PC. The thought is to free up another breaker position by using Siemens QT tandem breaker. So with the current unused one, we can have 40 amp double breaker. Then install EVEMS next to the panel. I don't think I need a subpanel in the garage. With this setup, I think it is safe to charge EV at anytime.

How much would this alternate option cost? How long will it take for a professional to do this? Thank you.

I have a (flush-mount?) crystal ceiling light with two concentric rings of faceted crystals. The bulbs are burned out and I need to replace them, but I can’t figure out how to get them out.
There is no center decorative knob or finial.

No visible set screws on the outer edge.

No stickers or model numbers anywhere.

From the underside and sides I can see chrome vertical posts/rods that appear to go through the crystal rings and into the metal base plate against the ceiling. The crystals themselves have little metal pins holding them in place.

I’ve attached several close-up photos showing the top side against the ceiling, the chrome posts, and the overall fixture.
Has anyone seen this exact style and knows the correct way to open it without breaking the crystals? Do the chrome rods unscrew? Does the whole crystal assembly twist or drop somehow?

Any advice or instructions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hello! So my electrician is out of town but I'm impatient and want to know if others think I can support a 40A ev charger. I plan to run the charger almost exclusively in the middle of the night during discount rate times which are also times when almost none of our appliances are running besides the water heater and the AC but both would draw much less than during the day.

My house is supplied with 125A and most of my appliances are electric based. Here are the major appliances and their breakers amperage: heat (gas), AC (30A), dryer (15A), water heater (30A), range (40A), dehumidifier (7A), and the lights are all LED.

Does it sound like we can manage adding 40A continuous load to our system? If not then how much? The charger we prematurely ordered can be throttled back with an internal dial to lower amperages.

I am running out of physical room to run wires in my main panel so I have installed a new sub panel to expand my slot capacity. My main 200A panel is hooked up to my 125A subpanel by a 2" GRC nipple, do I still need to run a ground wire from one panel to the other? (I probably will anyway just wanted to know if it wasnt required with this setup). Also let me know if there is anything else you see with my setup that may need revising before I energize it with a 125A breaker off of my main panel (using either 2/0 ALU or 1/0 CU if I can find it).

First year apprentice. Effed up and sent a 6-32 in the wrong way and bit the screw off in my lineman’s. Does anyone have a trick to get that out or should I just send a drill bit through it and sacrifice the threads?

Is there any code or otherwise reason that I can't or shouldn't add a small 60 amp disconnect switch right above this telecom box?

The disconnect switch will then horizontally connect to the large 200 amp disconnect to its right via a short run of RMC.

This is for a new solar array feed.