Two Separate Electrical Panels in New Home

Posted on
Mon Jan 18, 2016 4:52 am
300BlkPlinker offline
Posts: 26
Joined: Jan 20, 2014

Two Separate Electrical Panels in New Home

I'm through the framing phase of a new home being built and as I talk to the Electrician about panel locations I realize I may have made a huge mess. I have two 200 Amp panels being put into the house to make sure I have power for a table saw, my EV car charger, and some Ham radio equipment. Thought I was on top of things by requesting 400 amps total from the street.

The house is on a crawl space so good access to everything. Cat 6 and WiFi not an issue, well network connected.

From the road the power is 'split' so that 220v goes to each box. One in the garage, other in the Laundry room (center of house). I'm too far down the road to attempt to get all circuits that I may want to use Insteon/Indigo into one panel.

The problem comes in with the Insteon Hub from my Mac Mini. I have a 2443 Access point to help bridge inside one panel. But what about from one panel to the other? Will the Insteon communications cross this divide of two electrical panels?

I immediately have jumped to worst case scenario that I'm gonna need two instances of Indigo running on two Macs, one for each panel, and then figure out some type of comms handoff between the two Macs, and what am I going to do for iOS app and Prism access?

Anyone ever come across this before and if so what are my options?

Posted on
Mon Jan 18, 2016 5:21 am
nlagaros offline
Posts: 1646
Joined: Dec 20, 2010

Re: Two Separate Electrical Panels in New Home

I have the same situation in my house. I haven't had too much of a problem. I guess I have enough dual-band equipment that most of the communications is happening successfully over RF.

Posted on
Mon Jan 18, 2016 6:06 am
300BlkPlinker offline
Posts: 26
Joined: Jan 20, 2014

Re: Two Separate Electrical Panels in New Home

Great to hear. I won't be in the house for another 2-3 months but am keeping my fingers crossed.

Posted on
Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:40 am
Bollar offline
Posts: 528
Joined: Aug 11, 2013

Re: Two Separate Electrical Panels in New Home

That's the arrangement I have. This isn't really the breaker boxes' fault, but I have found that only dual band Insteon devices work well. I have too many UPSes and other devices that dirty the wireline-side signal for wired-only Insteon devices to work well.

Also, I switched to ZWave for outlets for the same reason -- at the time, Insteon didn't have a dual-band switchable electric outlet and I couldn't get the reliability I wanted.

Insteon / Z-Wave / Bryant Evolution Connex /Tesla / Roomba / Elk M1 / SiteSage / Enphase Enlighten / NOAA Alerts

Posted on
Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:44 am
eme jota ce offline
Posts: 618
Joined: Jul 09, 2009
Location: SW Florida

Re: Two Separate Electrical Panels in New Home

nlagaros wrote:
I have the same situation in my house. I haven't had too much of a problem. I guess I have enough dual-band equipment that most of the communications is happening successfully over RF.


I have a second panel (maybe a sub panel, but I'm not an electrician) in the detached garage. Lots of dual ban insteon installed out there. It works, but the Survey plugin does show that many of those Intern units have higher ping times.

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