Originally Posted by
Alan Schaffter
The only disadvantage of having a current sensor in or adjacent to the panel is that everything and anything powered by that circuit will turn on the DC. If you have your machines either on separate or grouped circuits you'll need multiple sensors, a sensor with an opening large enough for multiple wires, or a small "sensed" subpanel for all your machine circuits. None of this is especially difficult, it just requires a little planning, and the knowledge and skills to be able to mess with and rewire your breaker panel. You also need to be able to manually control your system- on those occasions when you want the DC running with no machine is running.
I had the same issue when I wired my autogates- I ended up putting current sensor switches at every machine outlet where the machine was serviced by a blast gate. The DC operates secondary to that function- it is triggered by a sensor on the autogate power transformer, so if any gate is opened automatically or manually the DC starts.