jaggedben
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern California
- Occupation
- Solar and Energy Storage Installer
How so? Power factor is indeed a vagary that muddies the water, but the distribution of electricity, or power or energy if you like, is better explained by Kirchoff than by a "preference" of a load to take power from one source over another. Moving backfed and load breakers around in a panel has no effect on from where a load breaker gets its power. It does have an effect on the current density in regions of the busbar, which is the reasoning behind the 120% rule's requirement that breakers feeding a busbar must be at opposite ends of the bar.
I think we're engaging in semantics here...
When explaining the concept to customers I always say that the power is used 'first by the house and any excess goes to the grid'. I don't think this is at all misleading or physically inaccurate and it's not helpful to reference Kirchoff with lay people. I agree that the word 'preference' is inappropriate, and that particularly if you don't have energy backfeeding on a given feeder or service conductor then it's useless to try to parse where the energy on the load side is coming from.