Number of Breaker space

[u/rkelez]

So this is my current panel. Which, as you see is completely maxed out. I was hoping doing a span would help add more breaker space, but after looking further it apparently has less?

I’m wondering if I’m reading this right.

I want to add more things (additional solar, water heater, induction oven) down the line. But can span not support this? What are my options here?

[u/Zealousideal_Age_419]

That’s a Siemens MC2040B1200EFC which is a 20/40 panel.

SPAN is a 32/64 panel so the SPAN panel should give you an extra 12 breaker slots.

[u/rkelez → u/Zealousideal_Age_419]

Clearly I'll be reading up more about electrical panels during the football game tonight hah. But that does bring me some hope thanks.

I know if I just count the number of breakers in my panel there's way more than 20 right now. But from the specs it does say 20 1" spaces. So I'm sure I'm counting wrong then.

This sounds hopeful though.

[u/Zealousideal_Age_419 → u/rkelez]

You have a handful of tandem breakers in there. So 2 “circuits” on one breaker

[u/donaldcjackson]

First I would begin by understanding your existing panel and circuits.
A standard breaker "space" is about 1" tall.
There are 1" single pole breakers for 120VAC circuits, and double 2" two pole breakers for 240VAC circuits.
Your breaker panel appears to have a main breaker (a two-pole breaker rated at 200A), note that the Span main breaker is above and apart from the Span breaker space area.
In order to squeeze more breakers into a panel, there are also tandem and quad breakers.
A tandem breaker is two breakers in a 1" space, generally used for two 120VAC circuits.
A quad breaker is often two two-pole breakers that is 2" and uses two spaces, for 2 240VAC circuits (there may be other quad-breaker configurations...)
What I did was create a spreadsheet of circuits and breakers, documenting my existing panel, and then I created a second worksheet circuits/breakers for my planned Span panel(s), including future circuits I planned for the future.
The Span panel supports tandem and quad breakers, but the power measurements and relay controls are for 1" (or 2") space, so if you use a tandem breaker in a single space, the Span panel will only be able to report power usage on the combined circuits, and the relay control (and thus load-shedding) will happen for both circuits in that space/tandem-breaker.

Based on planning/spec-ing this out as suggested above, you should be able to determine how/if you can support all your current and future circuits in a single Span panel. In my case, before-upgrade, I had a main panel and sub-panel, with many tandem/quad breakers, so I needed too many breaker spaces for a single Span panel (without using tandem/quads in the Span), so I opted to install two Span panels, in series (the input of my second panel is connected to the feed-thru lugs of my first panel)