Your Home Electrical Service and Panel – Friend or Foe? Part I – Electrical Services
May is Electrical Safety Month and understanding the basics of your home electrical service and panel will go a long way when simple troubleshooting of an occasional circuit is required or when more serious issues like the loss of power. Often the electrical service to your house is not thought of until an interruption in service occurs. To help simplify this massive collection of wires, metal enclosures and circuit breakers, your friends at Lippolis Electric have put together a two-part series. Part I addresses Service (those wires leading up to the electrical panel, including the meter) and Part II focuses solely on the electrical panel.
Your Electrical Service, From Pole-to-Home
In most cases, your house receives its electrical power from the utility through overhead conductors strung from pole-to-house. Some of the poles are owned by the telephone company and others by the power utility. All the lines on the pole exist through an agreement between power, telephone, and cable companies. It is worth noting here there is an order to those wires-CATV on the bottom tier, phone lines slighting above and after 4-foot separation, the electrical cables, both secondaries and primaries and transformers, are on the top.
Who is Responsible for What?
The servicing of those conductors up to the ‘service connection point’ (see photo above) is the responsibility of your local utility. If for instance after a storm your home is without power, first you should stay indoors and never approach downed electrical wires, and second call your local utility for repair.
In most cases, the utility will send a truck for the repair but if the cables or attachments on your house have been damaged, they may tell you to call your electrician. This is because after the ‘service connection point’, responsibility for the maintenance of the ‘service entrance conductors’ (those conductors mounted on the side of your house and going into your meter and out to the panel) are the sole responsibility of the homeowner.
For Con Edison customers, a more detailed explanation of responsibilities can be found in the Con Edison Blue Book:
Not to complicate matters further, the electrical meter (that round smart device used to record your usage) is the property of the utility but the enclosure that it is plugged into is owned and maintained by the homeowner. See Section IV in the Blue Book.
Most residential services are 120/240-volt arrangements and can range from 100 amps (minimum) to as high as 1200 amps and above based on demand requirements-the bigger the home the greater the requirements. However, 100 to 200 amps services are the norm in this region.
Flickering lights or partial service to sections of your house can represent several serious conditions. The problem could exist internally (your responsibility) or externally (utility responsibility). It can even be a combination of both, and it is for these reasons we urge you to trust in the reliable team at Lippolis Electric.
Thank you for your attention, we hope you find this both informational and helpful. Please follow us in our next installment, Part II, Your Electrical Panel.
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