Search for what an electrical panel upgrade costs in Belleville and you get salary data, American contractors, and a lot of pages that say “it depends” for eight hundred words before telling you to call for a free estimate.
So here are numbers.
The short answer
- 100 amp to 200 amp upgrade: $2,400 to $3,800
- Fuse box replacement: $2,900 to $4,200
- 60 amp service change: usually at the top of that second range or above it
Those include the ESA permit and the inspection. HST is on top.
If you want the reasoning and the things that move a job from one end of a range to the other, keep reading. If you just wanted the number, that is the number.
Why a fuse box costs more than a panel
People assume replacing a fuse box is simpler because it is smaller. It is usually the more expensive job.
The box itself is not the problem. The problem is what is attached to it. A house still on fuses is typically pre-1960, which means the service entrance cable, the mast, the meter base and the grounding are all the same age. None of that can be connected to a new 200 amp panel as-is, so the “panel replacement” is really a whole service replacement.
The branch wiring at the box is also often in poor shape — brittle insulation, old splices, sometimes knob and tube coming in. Some of it has to be made good before it can be landed on a breaker.
What moves the price inside the range
Distance from the meter to the panel. The single largest variable. A panel directly inside the wall from the meter is the cheapest version. A panel at the far end of a basement is several metres of heavy, expensive cable and a lot more labour.
Whether the mast and meter base need replacing. On anything pre-1980, they usually do. Putting a new panel on a forty-year-old mast is spending most of the money and keeping the weakest part.
Plaster or drywall. Plaster and lath is slower to open and much slower to make good. Add several hundred dollars where the run is through finished plaster.
Moving the panel. Some renovations and some insurers want the panel relocated. That is a bigger job than replacing it in place.
What we find once it is open. Aluminum branch wiring, live knob and tube spliced in upstream, double-tapped breakers. Common, and each changes the work.
The three things that surprise people
One — the utility disconnect is not instant. Your power has to be disconnected at the meter by the utility before anything can start. That gets booked, and the slot you get is the slot you get. It is the main reason a panel upgrade takes about two weeks from quote to certificate rather than two days.
Two — the certificate arrives after the work. The ESA inspector comes out after the panel is in and energised, usually within ten days. The Certificate of Inspection follows that. If you are selling and your lawyer wants the certificate, start earlier than you think you need to.
Three — patching is not included. Where a wall has been opened, we make it safe and tidy, but we are not drywallers or plasterers. Budget separately for finishing if the work is in a visible room. It is usually a few hundred dollars and it is the line people forget.
When you do not need one
Worth saying, because it saves people money.
If your service is already 200 amp and the panel is simply full, you may only need a sub-panel or a set of tandem breakers. Much cheaper, much faster, no utility involvement.
If one circuit trips constantly, that is an overloaded circuit, not an undersized service. The fix is another circuit.
And if you are adding an EV charger to a 100 amp service, an energy management system is sometimes a legitimate alternative to a service upgrade — it watches the whole-house load and throttles the charger when the house is busy. It costs a fraction of a service change and it is fully code-compliant.
We do a load calculation before quoting for exactly this reason. Sometimes the answer is that you do not need the expensive thing.
Getting a number for your house
Any figure quoted over the phone for a service change is a guess, including ours. The variables are all things you have to look at.
What we will do on the phone is tell you which range you are probably in, based on the age of the house, what the panel says on it, and where it sits relative to the meter. That takes about five minutes and it is usually accurate enough to plan around.
Then the site visit gives you a written, itemized, fixed price — which does not move once you have signed unless we find something behind a wall, in which case we stop and call you first.
Prices on this page
These ranges are placeholders carried over from the design mockup. They must be replaced with the client's real figures, and the "updated" date changed, before this post is published.