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150 amp vs 200 amp service.

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19K views 3 replies 3 participants last post by  MikeFL  
#1 ·
I am looking for some advice on a pending upgrade to my residential electric service.

As a little background, I live in a 3100 sq ft 5 bedroom/3bathroom house in Southern California. Two adults and two children live in the home. We do not run alot of things concurrently and try to practice energy savings as much as possible.

Currently I have a 100 amp federal pacific electric company circuit breaker. It functions well for our current lifestyle as we have not tripped any breaker since we moved in over 1.5 years ago.

We are looking to make several upgrades to the home in the next 5+ years which include a backyard hot tub, outdoor kitchen (sink, beverage fridge, patio lighting, no stove/oven), solar and will likely put in two EV charging stations. Last major upgrade would be a whole house fan and adding downstairs AC as we just have upstairs AC at the present time.

With coming upgrades and the known hazards of pacific electric breakers, we would like to upgrade our service. Initially had planned to upgrade to 200amp service and applied for permits via SDG&E however they came back with the following:

The requested project for panel upgrade is nearly complete however, in order to proceed please confirm the following:
  1. Customer is to provide all excavation, trench, 3” conduit, backfill, compaction, 3/4" pulling and measuring tape in conduit and surface repair from SH346055 (approx. 70’) as current conduit and wire cannot support 200a
OR
  1. Customer to lower request to 150amp panel as that is max size capable with current conduit or wire.
After talking with an electrician here, he felt that 150 amp service would be adequate for what we currently have and are planning with upgrades as this would avoid the potential large cost of upgrading the current conduit with all the trenching and surface repair costs (He estimates 5-10K on top of the service upgrade).

My questions are:
1. Based on the above, does 150amp service seem to be adequate for what we would need?
2. Is going with 150amp service now going to cause issues with resale in the future?

Thanks for your time and suggestions.
 
#2 ·
150A sounds lean for everything you have planned. You really need to a do a proper load calculation. Do you have piped nat gas?

150A is still a worthwhile upgrade. It uses 200A gear with a smaller main breaker. The one thing I recommend is for the meter-to-main-breaker wire, and ground wire, be sized for 200A to make the eventual upgrade easier.

Resale should be better than with a 100A FPE main.
 
#4 ·
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