Hello all,
I am adding a gfci breaker to my main breaker panel. By the looks of my panel I think the ground bus and neutral bus are bonded but not certain of this. It looks like my right bus bar is the neutral bus and the left is the ground bus. The copper wires coming in from the bottom and going to the right/neutral bus are bonded to ground rods. There is a flat metal strip running from the center of each bus bar to the center of the panel and I am thinking this is connecting both the neutral and ground bus bars together. I am wanting to check the following.
- Since my ground and neutral bars are connected I can treat them interchangeably when choosing where to place ground wires and neutral wires.
- Since I can treat the two bars interchangeably I can place the gfci pigtail and the incoming ground wire from the circuit I will hook it up to onto the same bus bar.
Thank you for your support and advice in this matter.
Ben
Best Answer
Yep, you got it right. Main panels (not sub-panels) always have the ground and neutral bonded (connected). I prefer to put neutrals on the bus bar that can be isolated and is connected to the neutral conductor. The reasons for this is neutrals carry as much current as the hots and should have a good path. Not only that, if the main panel were ever to become a sub-panel (like behind a generator transfer switch), it's much easier to do that install.