Electrical panel upgrades

Signs it's time to upgrade

A panel upgrade replaces the main electrical panel, and often the service entrance and meter socket with it, so your home or building can safely carry today's loads. These are the situations that bring most customers to us:

• You have a 100-amp service and you're adding an EV charger, central air, an electric range or dryer, a spa, or an ADU.
• Breakers trip when several things run at once, or there's no room left in the panel for new circuits.
• The panel is a brand with a known failure history, such as Federal Pacific (Stab-Lok) or Zinsco, or it still uses fuses.
• The panel is warm to the touch, buzzes, shows rust or scorch marks, or has double-tapped breakers.
• A home inspector, insurer or buyer has flagged the panel during a sale.
• You're remodeling and the plans call for more circuits than the existing panel can hold.

What a panel upgrade includes

• A load calculation, so the new service size matches how you actually use power.
• A new main panel, commonly 200 amps for a single-family home, with new breakers including the arc-fault and ground-fault protection current code requires.
• Grounding and bonding brought up to current code.
• Service entrance and meter socket work where the utility or the condition of the equipment requires it, for overhead or underground service.
• Clear labeling of every circuit.
• Options you can add while the panel is open: whole-house surge protection, a sub-panel for a garage or ADU, or a dedicated circuit for an EV charger.

Permits, utility and inspection

A panel upgrade involves three parties: us, your permit office and your utility. In the City of Los Angeles that means an LADBS permit and LADWP for the service. In most other cities it's the city building department (or LA County Building & Safety in unincorporated areas) and Southern California Edison. A few cities run their own utility, including Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena and Anaheim.

The utility's scheduling usually sets the overall timeline, which is why these jobs are measured in weeks from first visit to final inspection even though the installation itself takes a day. We coordinate all of it and keep you posted. Read more about who handles your permit and power.

What changes the price

We don't publish prices or quote by phone, because the same request can be a very different job from one house to the next. During the free on-site visit we look at exactly these things, then put the price in writing:

• The service size you need, based on the load calculation.
• Overhead or underground service, and the condition of the existing service entrance.
• Whether the meter or the panel has to move to meet current utility and code requirements.
• The state of the existing grounding and bonding.
• Any sub-panels or new circuits you want done at the same time.
• Permit and utility fees, which differ by city.