{"id":202,"date":"2018-09-19T15:22:27","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T22:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pe.local\/whats-an-electrical-panel\/"},"modified":"2024-10-31T09:03:52","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T16:03:52","slug":"whats-an-electrical-panel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/electrical-service\/whats-an-electrical-panel\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s an Electrical Panel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dealing with electricity can be dangerous, especially if you don\u2019t understand it. When it comes to electrical work and the electrical panels in homes, it\u2019s common for homeowners to be unfamiliar with how they work and what\u2019s involved in their construction. Here is some helpful information on your electrical panel and how it controls your home\u2019s electricity.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-2093 size-full\" title=\"Residential Electric Panel\" src=\"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/residential-electric-panel-prairie-electric.jpg\" alt=\"Residential Electric Panel in Portland OR\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" \/>Service Panel<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each home has a service panel, otherwise known as a distribution center. This is the main \u201chub\u201d for your electricity and it is generally located in the basement or utility room, or garage. The service panel distributes electricity through individual circuits that run through the home. Usually the panel has circuit breakers that look like switches, which acts to stop electricity flow when there is an issue.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>When should you access the service panel?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At some point, you will need to access the service panel in your home, generally for three main reasons:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To shut off power to the whole house, by switching off the large breaker<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To reset a circuit breaker that trips<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To turn off power to individual circuits while doing other electrical work in the home<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you find yourself heading to the electrical panel often because of tripped circuits, you may need to have a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/services\/residential\/inside\/\">licensed electrician<\/a> take a look and see if there is an issue. Plugging too many appliances into a circuit could cause the system to sense that more power needs to go to that area and it could cause it to trip and shut off power. This is a built-in way to keep your home safe by protecting the wiring of the circuit. Each circuit has a limit and too much demand on one specific circuit could cause it to heat and catch fire. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If the electrical panel in your home is old and the switches look faulty, or if you\u2019re having issues with continually tripping certain circuits, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/contact-us\/\">contact our team today<\/a> at Prairie Electric to take a look at your electrical panel.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Demystify the heart of your home\u2019s electrical system\u2014the essential electrical panel explained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-electrical-service","category-residential-resources"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prairielectric.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}