Evolution of the E-Panel

While the PS2 system enjoys great acceptance in North America, it is virtually non existent in
Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. There are a couple of reasons for this. It is
physically too large for European homes. It uses breakers not available outside of North
America, it is expensive and it looks too American.
MidNite Solar, Inc.
A few months after having resigned as president of OutBack Power Systems (March 2005), the
urge to design something overcame my daily routine of yard work and house maintenance. I
started with a new approach to solve what seemed to me to be the last issue for RE circuit
breaker boxes. My goal was to make a modular breaker box that could expand as required and
yet take up the smallest footprint on the wall. The design breakthrough that allowed the small
footprint was to incorporate a hinged door to which the inverter would mount. This task turned
out to be easier than I thought. We were all a little concerned about the strength of the door since
it was going to have a 60 pound inverter mounted to it. Thank goodness for UL standards. They
require a test to cover just this issue. ETL now has pictures of two guys (300 pounds) standing
on the inverter mounted to the door, and the door is open! The hinged door allows the installer to
bolt the inverter to the door while the door is laying flat on a table. Once bolted together, simply
hang the door on the chassis. Anyone that has had to hold an inverter up in the air while trying to
screw it down will appreciate this feature. The installer no longer needs three hands and a back
of steel to mount an inverter.
There is a certain amount of room required for breakers, terminal blocks and such so putting the
inverter directly over these items made the footprint extremely small. Since the inverter was
taking up the entire face of the new E-Panel, there was no place to put the circuit breakers but out
the sides. This side exit allowed the depth of the E-Panel to be half that of previous designs. Din
Rail mount breakers were selected due to their low cost and small size. In all of the tens of
thousands of these Din Rail mount breakers I’ve sold in the past, I am aware of only one single
Din Rail breaker that had a problem. This was just one more good reason to select these breakers
for the E-Panel. The 63 amp 125VDC breakers used for charge controller disconnects cost half
as much as other styles used today. CBI in South Africa who makes these breakers has
graciously made changes on my recommendations to have the DC breakers re-tested to 125VDC.
The industry has benefited from this change. They are now in the process of having the MidNite
DC-GFP breaker assembly UL listed. This will finally allow DC-GFP assemblies to be priced as
they should be, (affordable).
The more we got into the design features of the E-Panel the more real world features kept on
growing. It was decided to pre-wire the AC bypass switch and generator/utility input disconnect
breakers. We also decided to provide the inverter cables with the E-Panel to help make
installation a snap. The installer has enough to do with solar panels, batteries and generators. The
pre-wired E-Panel will make the installation go a little smoother and quicker, thus reducing
overall cost. The fact that the E-Panel handles AC and DC circuits cuts hundreds of dollars out of
the bill as opposed to the larger boxes offered today. A complete list of features is included at the
end of this paper for your review. Comments are always welcome too.
The evolution of the E-Panel was the toughest of any breaker box I have done, but it has been
worth it. There have been hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars spent in the design of the
E-Panel. I’ve learned over the years that in a product like this, you need to actually build some,