Somebody smarter than me explain this electrical dilemma. Now, I know wiring, etc, but this has me baffled, and sounds expensive to fix........and a long story. I'm a pretty fart smeller when it comes to this, but this REALLY has me baffled. 

 Back in December/January, when Mom was out here for the winter, my Niece Josie blew up my oven. Set it on fire, burning up an element, whole shebang. Wasn't really her fault, but still fun to pick on her for it. Anyway, a couple weeks later lost power to half the house. Kinda weird, all the bedrooms except the master, half the kitchen, half the basement. Call the power company thinking one leg of my power was not working. Utility guy from APS helps me out turning off power to the house and finding a bad main breaker, helps me file and clean the contacts in the panel, etc. Of COURSE, it's not a breaker anyone stocks like Home Depot, its a $500 special order breaker which I procure from another source, install, then have to get inspected by the city before they'll turn power back on, yada yada yada. Got that all done pretty quickly really, although the ""inspector" I don't think knows an electrical panel from a toothbrush.... but all worked fine until tonight.

 So tonight, power goes out in half the house the same exact way! Here's where it gets funny. I turn off breakers on one side, reset the main, and turn breakers on one at a time, nothing. I'm scratching my head here at this point. most of the kitchen works, fridge, etc, but half the receptacles are out, Microwave/range hood out. My son was checking the stove to see if it worked, it did, and also VOILA! Microwave came on! Check it again, stove on, got all my lights back! I'm thinkin' stove issue. pull it out, unhook it, turn off its breaker, nothing. hook it all back up, turn it on, VOILA! Lights again!

 Now I go out really puzzled here and just instinctively wiggle the breakers on that side of the panel. get to the top one on the right side, nowhere near the stove breaker and pretty blue sparks, frying and snapping sounds lit up the side yard from both the main breaker and half of them on that side...(As well as my eyes, other parts of my anatomy, and I musta spilled water on my pants when I filled the dog dish earlier is all I can figure)

 Time for a new panel? This is what I DON'T want to hear, as that's a rather large deal since I have a 400 amp service, and it's only maybe 10 years old.........Or could it be since I replaced the main that the rest of the breakers just need to be ordered and replaced? I'm assuming somehow through my stove I was supplying power from one 120V leg to the other side of the panel. It's been working since the Harry Potter style magical light show, but I don't wanna burn the house down just YET either........

Sounds like a bad neutral or a loose connection take a piece of wire and go from the ground bus in the panel to the neutral bus and see if that fixes the problem if it does then bad neutral what brand panel is it and is it copper or aluminum wire and take a meter and check both legs on the main breaker

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Sounds like "line to neutral load". Open neutral in a _/3 romex or shorted to neutral. You prob got a cooked j-box somewhere. Do you have overhead or underground feed?

Underground entrance.

Dunno what it was, for sure. All fixed now, at least for now. All new breakers (some were found to be pretty bad, so I had the guy put all brand new in), main breaker was found to be faulty (Possibly a defect from new, or the other breakers in the panel were working it over little by little), so we replaced it with a Seimans instead of a Murray this time around. Gotta go get my money back on the Murray I paid $400 for, but I got all that done, all lines and loads checked for $450 and a handshake agreement between him and the power company guy that if it happens again, APS is replacing my entire entrance and wire, because that is the only thing left that it could possibly be.    Neither of them had ever seen anything like this.   

Ray