Electrical Panel Upgrade in Springfield
The panel is the heart of your home’s electrical system. Every circuit runs through it, and when it’s undersized, full, or one of the brands later found unsafe, it quietly limits everything you can do and sometimes becomes a fire risk. Summit Electric has upgraded panels across Springfield, Riverton, and the surrounding communities since 1985, family-owned the whole way, with licensed electricians on every job. We pull the permit, and the work gets inspected.
Signs Your Panel Is Past Its Limit
A panel tells you it’s done in a few clear ways. Breakers that trip when the microwave and a space heater run on the same circuit. A fuse box, which means the service is likely 60A and was sized for a house with far fewer loads than yours has now. No open spaces left, so every new circuit means a double-tapped breaker feeding two wires off one lug. A burning smell, warm spots on the cover, or scorch marks around a breaker, which mean a connection is failing under load.
Then there are the panels that look fine and aren’t. Several brands from the 1960s through the 1980s were later found unsafe because their breakers don’t reliably trip on a fault. If you have one, the safest fix is replacement, and a whole-panel inspection confirms what you’re dealing with.
What 100A vs 200A Actually Means for You
Amperage is how much electricity your home can pull at one time. A 100A service was plenty when homes had a small number of circuits. Today, between electric ranges, multiple bathrooms, finished basements, well pumps, and increasingly an EV charger, the demand adds up fast. A 200A service roughly doubles your headroom and gives you physical space in the panel for the circuits you’ll add over the next 20 years.
Before we quote, we run a load calculation based on your home’s square footage and the appliances you run. That number tells us honestly whether you need 200A or whether a clean 100A panel with open spaces will carry you. We won’t sell you amperage you don’t need.
What the Upgrade Includes
A proper panel upgrade is more than swapping a box. We replace the panel and main breaker, update the meter base and service entrance conductors when they’re undersized or weathered, and bring the grounding and bonding up to current code, including separating the neutral and ground in the subpanels where they were improperly tied together. Every circuit gets landed on its own breaker and clearly labeled. Where code now requires it, we add AFCI and GFCI protection so a fault or arc trips the breaker instead of starting a fire.
The power utility drops your service while we work and reconnects it when the panel is energized. The inspection happens before the cover goes back on, so a third party confirms the work is right.
One Project, Years of Headroom
A panel upgrade is the foundation that makes other work possible. It’s the cheapest day to add the capacity for a future generator and transfer switch, a whole-home surge protector mounted right at the panel, or the dedicated circuits a rewire depends on. If your panel keeps tripping or feels warm, that’s a repair question first, and we’ll tell you plainly whether a fix or a full upgrade is the right call.
Serving the Whole Springfield Area
Our electricians upgrade panels in Springfield, Riverton, Lakeside, and Cedar Grove, plus Maplewood and Fairview. Browse every community we serve, or contact us to schedule a free estimate. Questions first? Call (555) 123-4567 and talk to an electrician, not a call center.