That is not a normal way to connect grounds. But of greater concern is what appears to be multiwire circuits (the red/black/white cables) that terminate on tandem breakers. This is NOT correct and may result in overloading the neutral wires of each circuit. The two hot wires of a multiwire circuit should each terminate on separate breakers, each on a different hot bus. The tandems do not allow for that. Best advice would be to upgrade this panel.

I personaly think we are talking about 2 differnt things For some price rules. I have been wiring for about 30 years. Here we have SqD, Westinghouse, Frank Adams, GE, Siemans and a couple of other names I dont use. I bought a home with a new GE panel and removed it to install a SqDQO before we moved in. SQD if any thing may be a little touchy with tripping quick. Rather that than not at all. And my wife likes the red window identifying the triped breaker. At our local parts house we had a demo a few years back that had a receptical fed by several name brand breakers. The point was to stick a paper clip into the recep and check the reaction time of the breakers. The SqD triped immediatly. The GE, Westinghouse and others fed the current to the point the paper clip burnt in 2. I thought that was a fluke and returned with 3 breakers from my truck. All tested the same. I buy SqD. I have been involved in other instances where GE fed the short and did not trip. With the new SqDHOM series you get the same tripping characteristics with out the red window and price competative with the others

Thanks for the excellent responses. Currently I can answer these questions. 1) Initially the service entrance voltage was 140 - 141V. Way too high. A transformer supplying power to our unit was changed and readings are now correct. Oddly, at 141V the tripping was just as frequent. I would have thought higher voltage would have lowered the Amps drawn, and there would have been less frequent tripping. Can this high voltage (for a couple of months during construction) have caused the breakers to become prone to tripping? Voltage is now correct at both ends of the run. No run is longer than 75 feet or so from the main panel. 2) I kept the nature of the equipment back as it might cloud the issue a bit. Yes there is an inrush as this is studio flash equipment. That being said, there is no problem using this gear anywhere else in the city (I have been). Even the 15A on the stove is fine, but even a 30A SqD trips repeatedly. The units plug in with standard 16GA cords. I have changed the cords to 15' 14GA heavy-duty high-visibility (orange and black) cords mostly for visibility. The equipment repair technician says a transformer charges capacitors and only basic switches and so-on are between the line-in and the transformer. No capacitors directly connected to the line-in. There is a 'slow' setting (or gentle) on the unit for situations where the units must work on non-dedicated circuits that already have significant loads on them. This 'slow' setting trips as often as the normal setting. Again, they work everywhere else (on normal setting), even the stove outlet. 3) Counterfeit: I compared a breaker to the photos in the article. #C is not identical. Most of my tab is exposed, not 1/2 as pictured otherwise they match. 4) Multi-wire branch: I think so, 1 Neutral for 2 circuits. A single unit can trip a breaker or several units at the same time can trip 1 or more breakers in no particular pattern. My previous set-up was 12GA 3-wire BX cables with 2-20A sharing 1 neutral with no issues. 5) The breakers are QO type HACR 20A. 6) An ammeter was put on the units. There is a very brief peak over 20A. It measures between 28 to just over 30A. There was some talk about this brief peak measurement being unreliable for an exact figure. A cheaper meter read anywhere from 20A-38A. A better quality Fluke was typically under 25A. The 30A SqD trips with the same frequency as 20A so simply swapping to 30A (even in the short term) isn't an option. Thanks for your knowledgeable responses and effort to help with this. Tom

The rules requiring customer-controlled disconnects near the meter are relatively recent. And many of them are unwritten, but successfully enforced. In the late 1960's, we did lots of jobs where the meter was on one end of the house and the panel (first disconnect) was near the center of the house. Standard practice at the time. Until the first protected disconnect, the service cable has only the POCO overload device at the transformer- and that is many times the amperage rating of the cable. There were cases where a duplex might have the meters side-by-side on one end of the building and the cable would run through the walls of one unit to the first panel in the second unit. It is illegal for fotostat to do any electrical work on the premises described.