[carcostthrow]

Oh it gets even funnier then that.

So I took quick look into what it would actually take to upgrade the main circuit breaker in the house assuming a 100A to 200A upgrade is needed to accommodate both an EV and a heat pump. I thought it was $5000 or so.

As it turns out, $5000 is for pole mounted service. It's range is actually around $15,000 to $25,000 for underground service, as it requires digging the line from the street to the house. Unknown how much cost there if too many houses here need to upgrade as well which would necessitate upgrading transformers feeding this area (most houses here are 100A AFAIK).

[DannyBee]

This is only true in high cost states. In most states, it's 10-15 a ft plus some minimum cost that is like 1500 bucks for trenching setup. Maybe 15-20 in the worst case.

To redo my service to single phase 800 amps, which required a new transformer on a pole, new commercial panel, 100 feet of large underground drop (parallel MCM 600), etc, georgia power + electrician total cost was 10k.

If i had wanted to drag 3 phase power to my shop, which was a mile away, they would charge 10 bucks a foot, total cost 55k.

(I convert the large single phase instead with a digital 3-phase converter)

PGE/California electricians is particularly horrible about costing - i've seen combined costs (IE between PGE + electrician) of like 15k for panel upgrades that require 10 feet of trenching

[brianwawok]

EV or not EV, I really think you want 200A service? It has been the standard for quite a few years, and I cannot imagine only having 100A service in a proper house (would be fine for an apartment or whatnot). Now I am higher electric usage than most, but I hit over 100A several times a day (but have never hit 200A and flipped my breaker).

The actually switching out your circuit breaker from 100A to 200A is cheap (2-3k?). Almost all of the cost is for the utility to run you a bigger line, and they can pretty much charge you anything they want (what is your alternative if you don't like the price?)

[zbrozek]

Electrical code has completely unreasonable and unrealistic demand factors associated with appliances. Basically "1" for just about everything, as well as 3 watts per square foot of floor area. If you sum all of these things up, I'm well above the 200 amp service delivered to my home.

Reality? I had a peak draw of 23 amps from the grid in the last year. Luckily the NEC has an escape valve for folks who can prove that.

[carcostthrow]

>It has been the standard for quite a few years, and I cannot imagine only having 100A service in a proper house

100A service is fairly normal here for smaller homes. As heating here is primarily done by natural gas furnaces rather then electrical heating. Which make sense; gas is way cheaper to heat with here then electricity. And it saves a dollar for the developer.

I don't know about larger homes though; I'd imagine that they'd have 200A circuits but it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't unless the builder specifically requested it.

[hinkley]

I think my house has 2x200A. It was zoned multi family but the previous owners had a separate service for an electric car, and there’s still bits of electronics in the attic from where they tried to do crypto mining.

I’m sure their equipment overheated. The roof is not insulated and the attic fan is pushing against a louver that’s the wrong design. It gets hot up there without any equipment.

[Whinner]

As a counter point, I paid about $1600 in 2019 in northern NJ to have my circuit breaker panel replaced and my service upgraded from 100 to 200.