Since electricity is the most common power source in the United States, property owners are encouraged to install a load center electrical panel to dispense electricity throughout their properties to power all their branch circuits. But what exactly is a load center electrical panel, and why is it important? Read on to find out.
What’s a Load Center Electrical Panel?
A load center electrical panel is a breaker box or fuse box designed to distribute electricity from your utility source to different parts of your property for reliable power distribution. It also protects different circuits in your property from over-current through circuit breakers and fuses.
This panel is a metal enclosure with circuit breakers to protect, regulate, and distribute power circuits and light within your property. This panel is suitable for residential and commercial applications, including office buildings, townhouses, single-family houses, and apartment buildings. However, it’s mainly intended for residential applications.
A load center electrical panel is usually rated less than 225 amps and a maximum of 240 volts. NEC claims that load center electrical panels are essential for controlling lighting, heat, and power circuits and should be mounted against walls or cabinets. They’re only accessible from the front side. Alternative names for a load center electrical center are a panel board, a breaker box, a distribution panel, and a fuse box.
Modern load center electrical panels are designed, developed, and tested using the latest standards from various regulatory bodies, including Underwriters Laboratories (UL), the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), Canadian Standards Association (CSA), and the National Electrical Code (NEC).
Is there a Difference between a Load Center Electrical Panel and a Panel Board?
As noted above, a load center electrical panel and a panel board mean the same thing. So long as all the UL and NEC standards have been met during manufacturing, there’s no significant difference between the two panels. In the U.S., small, low-cost panel boards are sold mainly for residential usage as load center electrical panels.
Nevertheless, panel boards are usually deeper than load center electrical panels and can house both bolt-on circuit breakers and plug-on breakers. On the other hand, a load center electrical panel only utilizes plug-on breakers.
Depending on the brand of your load center, it should come with the interior compartment already inside the enclosure. The enclosure and the internal compartment are shipped separately with the panel board because they aren’t installed simultaneously.
