Electrical Panel Upgrades

Your electrical panel decides what your house can and can't do. A lot of homes in Chilcoot and the surrounding Sierra Nevada are still running on services sized for a different era — before heat pumps, well pumps, shop tools, and EV chargers all wanted their own circuit. If breakers trip regularly, the panel is out of spaces, or you're planning an addition or a major new appliance, it's time to find out what your service can actually support.

Every upgrade starts with an NEC load calculation: what the house demands today, plus what you're planning to add. That math — not a rule of thumb — determines whether you need a 200-amp service, a subpanel, or just a smarter arrangement of the circuits you already have. It's how the code requires the work to be done, and it's also how you avoid paying for capacity you'll never use.

A modern panel gives you open breaker spaces for future circuits, AFCI and GFCI protection where current code calls for it, and a clean, labeled layout that makes every future electrical job faster. If an EV charger, a shop subpanel, or electric heat is anywhere in your plans, the panel is where that conversation starts.

Some older panels have well-known reliability problems, and others have simply been modified so many times over the decades that what's inside no longer matches any label on the door. Add the wide temperature swings Sierra equipment lives through, and aging connections deserve a hard look. We'll give you a straight assessment of what you have before recommending anything — sometimes the honest answer is that your panel is fine as it sits.

Panel work is permitted and inspected, and every calculation is done to the NEC — that's the standard the work is built to, not a sales line. Tell us what you're planning and we'll start with the numbers.

We perform panel and service upgrades throughout Sierra Valley, Truckee, and the greater Lake Tahoe area — based in Chilcoot, we're used to snow-country service conditions.