ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Commercial Sub Panel

Most of my experience involves residential so I'm not sure how to handle this situation:

SPECIFICS: Customer has requested a load calculation for his restaurant. He is renting out two adjacent areas in the same building for his restaurant. Both areas have 200 AMP Meters and 200 AMP Panels. One has a 60 AMP sub Panel and the other has a 100 AMP Sub Panel.

When I checked the panel here is what I fould:

AREA 1:
The 60 AMP Load center/Sub Panel (Square D, QO)had 24 Spaces. Is it permissable to install a 60AMP Subpanel with 24 spaces?

AREA 2:
The 100 AMP Load center/Sub Panel (Square D, QO)had 8 Spaces. I'm just wondering if whoever installed these got the load centers mixed up.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Allowance for future work/expansion/problems is not always a priority. To the best of my knowledge both these are legal.
If the total load on all 24 ckts exceeds 60A you'll trip the main. Maybe they just needed lots of distribution with no real load anyplace.
You might check the panels ... the 60A may have 125A busses and you can rewire it accordingly. The 100 amp can be swapped for a 24 ckt version. Whatever the reason for the odd ball set up, I see nothing illegal.
Just do your calculation as if there was no panel and see what comes up. If it turns out you need more power, seems to me that's the time to consider changing all this.

[This message has been edited by Steve Miller (edited 10-05-2005).]