Hello, my name is George Crompe. I'm the electrical technology instructor here at Kansas City Kansas Community College in the Technical Education Center. Today I'm going to be talking about how to determine the voltage at your home on the service panel and also give you some safety tips. In addition, I want to show you three different items that you would need to have in your possession in order to do this checks or do these checks. One, you would need, this is called a multimeter. This multimeter is called that because it does a multiple number of functions. It will check voltage, it will check resistance, and it will check continuity, meaning that it's a continuous path for the conductors, as well as some multimeters have amperage checks on it, but this one does not. The next device that I would strongly recommend that you purchase would be a voltmeter. And this particular voltmeter is rated at 600 volts and it will determine whether you have an AC source or a direct current source. AC stands for alternating current. It is critically important that you, when you're checking electrical energy, that you have some means of determining what the energy source is because electrical energy is such that you cannot see it. So you must have a metering device to determine that. And this voltmeter, which is called in the field, a wigens does a very good job. And then the third item that I want to show you is called a non-contact device to determine if there's a voltage source in terms of the current flowing through the conductors. Okay, what you see here before you is a display showing the incoming power that comes into your house from the utility service. And this particular device is called the weather head right here. So it comes through the weather head and it comes down to this metering can, which is where your kilowatt meter is located to determine how much energy your home is currently using. There is no meter present here. But what you see here is one, two, three wires coming in from the utility that comes down to these lugs that are located here in the meter base. These two individual lugs, the black wires here that I have my hands on, or the two that are considered to be energized or hot. In this case, in the display, they're not hot. They're just here for display purposes. However, 120 volts flows through this one, 120 volts flows through this one. That's a total of 240 volts. And since electrical energy flows to ground, we have a common or a neutral that's right here in the center. And then it flows through here through the metering can, comes down and then it goes into your circuit breaker panel in your home. If you look down in your panel there, you will see circuit breakers and the one at the top is called the main circuit breaker. So when this breaker is tripped, it de-energizes all the power from this point all the way down. So all of your circuits in your home will not have any energy once your main circuit breaker is de-energized. In this case, the wiring of this circuit breaker panel is done by way of the individual breakers for each circuit in your home. And there's a two pole breaker for your air conditioner, and a two pole breaker for your electric stove, if you have an electric stove, and there will be a two pole breaker for your electric dryer. They're all rated at different amperages. The amount of energy that's needed to provide those particular appliances. Here you see your lines of power coming into your house. You'll notice that there's a black wire here and a black wire here, and the one in the center has a stripe on it. Generally the neutral or the wire that's going to the ground will always have some type of designation. It'll either be white or it'll have a stripe running all the way down the line. That's the one that will go to the ground on your circuit breaker panel. So you follow these two wires from the meter can. It comes down and the solid black wire comes over to this lug right here on your circuit breaker panel. This is 120 volts at this location, and there's another 120 volts at this location. The two of them together will give you your 240 volts. Now, not all of your equipment in your home will use 240 volts. The 240 volts is primarily for the air conditioner, which will be on a two pole breaker like this one here, or your electric stove, which will be on another two pole breaker like this one here, or your electric dryer, if you have an electric dryer in your home. Those are the areas that the two pole breaker will take in the 120 and the 120 coming in to give you 240. The other circuit such as your lighting and your receptacles in the house are all 120, and they will have individual breakers such as this one here, this one here, and there are several others in the panel that will be marked either 15 or 20 amps. The two pole breakers will always be 30 amps, 40 amps, or 60 amps depending on the equipment that they're supplying the power to. Over to the side, you see a display showing the actual conductors leaving the circuit breaker panel going out to feed the various branch circuits in the home. Up to the top up here, this particular terminal right here is called a grounding terminal bar for your communications devices such as your internet service or your cable TV and your telephone. Then this display right here that shows the waterline bonding that provides an additional grounding path for safety purposes. In the event there is a short or some type of fault in the system, the electrical energy will flow through here to ground. If that doesn't provide the proper path or the shortest path, the electrical energy will also flow through this rod over here, which is in the ground. This is called a grounding rod. This particular rod is approximately, not approximately, it is 8 feet and length. The display here only shows a small portion of that. It is copper coated rod that will resist rust and some of the other mal functions that may occur with the earth changing its chemical balance. Now in terms of checking the electrical energy, this wigens here that I talked about earlier otherwise called a voltmeter will check voltages from zero up to 600 volts. You would take this device and place it in your home at the circuit breaker panel on this lead right here and this lead right here. That will give you 120 volts because you are going from the hot lead over to the neutral or the grounding lead which gives you 120. If you wanted to determine if you had 220 volts, what you would do you would go from this hot lead here to the other hot lead right here on your panel and that will give you a reading on your voltmeter of 220 or 240 volts. Now that is the proper way of determining if you have a voltage source coming into the house to your main circuit breaker. From that main circuit breaker, once you know that the voltage is present, it will be a matter of checking the individual breakers which you would go down to the side, determining what circuit you want to check. For example on this two pole breaker right here, you would check this one by putting your lead at the very end on the screw-in lug and then taking it over to the neutral to determine if you have a voltage source. And if you do have a reading, do you know that that one is fine. Other than that, that would be the proper way to determine if you have a voltage source at your panel in your home.