Your panel decides what else the house can have

When a house actually needs one

Two different reasons, and they are worth separating, because only one of them is urgent.

• The panel is full or unsafe

  No spare spaces, double-tapped breakers, a bus that is pitted or heat damaged, a brand with a known failure record, or a breaker that will not stay set. That is a safety question and it does not wait for a solar quote.

• You are adding load

  Solar with a battery, a Level 2 charger, a second condenser, a pool heater, a shop. Here the panel is not dangerous, it is simply too small for what comes next, and the upgrade belongs in the other project.

What the code requires, and what the inspector checks

Clark County and the City of North Las Vegas have both adopted the 2023 National Electrical Code. Two parts of it decide most of a residential service upgrade.

• The load calculation, NEC Article 220

  The service is sized from a calculation, not from a habit. What is in the house now, what you are adding, and the demand factors the code allows. An amperage quoted with no calculation behind it is a guess.

• Surge protection, NEC 230.67

  Every dwelling service has to have a surge protective device, and the section says plainly that where the service equipment is replaced, all of its requirements apply. A 100 amp to 200 amp upgrade brings the surge device with it. It is not something being sold to you. Leave it out and the work does not pass.

There is a quieter consequence of that same rule. If a company quotes a panel upgrade in this valley and no surge protective device appears on the estimate, either it is priced and not written down, or the estimate is not to the adopted code. Worth asking which.

Four permit authorities, not one

Where the house sits decides who issues the permit and who inspects it: the City of Las Vegas, the City of North Las Vegas, the City of Henderson, or unincorporated Clark County. The rules are close, the portals, forms and fees are not. Clark County does not publish a flat residential fee at all. It publishes a calculator labelled as an estimate and says the final figure is set by staff at fee work up.

We pull the permit, we meet the inspector, and where the meter has to come off we handle the release and the reconnect with NV Energy. You should not be the one calling the utility.

What we will not do

We will not put a price for a panel upgrade on a web page. It depends on the load calculation, on where the meter and the main sit, on whether the service conductors and the meter can are staying, and on which of the four jurisdictions you are in. You get a fixed written price once somebody has looked at it, and a photo of your panel from your phone gets us most of the way there.