[dusty29520]

A friend of mine has a remodeled house in NC. When it was remodeled they installed a GE 200A meter socket loadcenter. His inside panel is fed from the main lugs and his air conditioner and water heater are fed from the breakers. He now wants to feed his barn from this panel. He already has a 150 A panel and wire to get to the barn. What is the best way to connect to the loadcenter?

 

[vsheetz]

Welcome!

Sounds like the desire is to have the barn 150a panel as a subpanel of the existing main panel. A breaker would go into the main panel and wire run to the barn subpanel.

Subpanels in detached buildings are a very common question here. Suggest to use the search function to gain much knowledge, then ask any remaining and specific to your senario questions.

 

[kbsparky]

You can buy a 2-pole 150 Amp GE breaker that plugs into that outside panel. Be aware that those breakers require 4 spaces, so that might fill up said panel.

A 125 amp breaker only requires 2 spaces, so if you don't need the entire 150 Amp capacity for the barn (most barns do not require that much), you might consider using a smaller breaker for the barn feeder.

 

[junkcollector]

Even though the panel he has is maybe rated at 150 A, he can likely feed it with much less. The first step is to do a load calculation of every electrical load he plans on running. "Barn" is pretty nonspecific. I'm in the middle of farm county, so to me that means a building that houses animals. To other people, that might just mean storage shed, machine shed, or even workshop. No way a storage shed needs a 150 A feeder, or even most workshops. A common size for a workshop is 60 up to 100A. On the other end, I've seen large barns that have enough equipment to require a 200A or larger service all by itself.

 

[dusty29520]

His barn will be mostly used to park farm equipment under and he has 6 stalls for horses. I feel that 100A will be enough; he may hook up a welder for occasional small repairs. He just doesn't want to buy any more wire because he already has 4/0 aluminum. The problem is going to be connecting 4/0 aluminum to a 100-150A breaker.