Panel Upgrades in Portland & Southern Maine

Homes built before the 1980s in Greater Portland were commonly wired for 60-amp or 100-amp electrical service, which was plenty for a house with an oil furnace, a few lights, and a refrigerator. It is not plenty for a house that also wants central air, an induction range, a heat pump, and a Level 2 EV charger.

The symptom shows up as breakers that trip when two big appliances run at once, or a panel that is already full of double-tapped breakers because there was no room left for a legitimate new circuit. Neither is something to work around — both are reasons to have the service sized up front rather than patched.

If your panel is original to a house built roughly between the 1950s and 1980s, it's worth knowing what's behind the cover before anyone touches it. Federal Pacific Electric (FPE) panels with Stab-Lok breakers, and Zinsco panels, both have a documented history of breakers that fail to trip during an overload or short — the opposite of what a breaker is supposed to do. This is not a brand-loyalty opinion; it's been studied and reported on for decades by electrical safety researchers and insurers.

We don't scare-tactic every old panel into a replacement, but if yours carries either name on the cover, a full panel swap is the standard recommendation, not a patch.

200 amps is the standard new-construction service size in Maine today, and it's what we size most upgrades to unless there's a specific reason to go smaller or larger (a small condo unit, or a home doing serious electrification with a generator, might land somewhere else). A 200-amp panel gives headroom for a heat pump, an EV charger, and future additions without a second upgrade five years later.

The upgrade touches more than the panel itself: the service-entrance cable from the weatherhead, the meter socket, and the grounding electrode system all get inspected and often replaced together, since the whole chain has to be rated for the new capacity.

Electrical work in Maine, including a panel change, requires a permit pulled by a licensed electrician and a follow-up inspection through the Office of Professional Licensing's Electricians' Examining Board. We pull the permit and schedule the inspection as part of the job — it's not an add-on.

That paperwork matters later. A panel upgrade without a permit on file is a common flag in a home inspection when the house eventually sells, and it can complicate insurance claims if there's ever an electrical fire, whether or not the wiring itself was the cause.