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by rkangel 5 days ago
I believe that they're safe, but I don't understand how.

My circuit breaker is specced to be a bit lower than the capability of the downstream wiring. For the sake of argument let's say that the breaker is 16A and the circuit wiring is good for 20A.

Now the panel injects 8A into the circuit and suddenly I can pull 24A (16 from the circuit plus 8 from the panel), but that's through wiring that's only rated for 20A.

Does it rely on the fact that the actual amount of current from the panel is small (but continuous) and so we're likely to not push anything over the line?