The ‘required’ home upgrade people are paying for - but don’t even need

As more homeowners try to go green, their contractors may tell them they are required to upgrade their electrical panel — but some experts now say it’s an unnecessary expense. Electric dryers, induction ranges and central air conditioners: The more appliances people add to their homes, the more power they will need from their electrical panel, also called a breaker box. It has long been the industry standard to determine whether an electrical panel can safely power all the appliances in a home by adding up the maximum amount of power each appliance label says it uses, a new article by The Washington Post explains. But there’s also a less common method, in which a building inspector can find the hour of the year that the house used the most power and then make sure the panel can handle 125 percent of that amount. As more homeowners try to go green, their contractors may tell them they are required to upgrade their electrical panel — but some experts now say it’s an unnecessary expense (Getty Images)In most cases, “even at peak demand, we see there’s not much cause for concern,” Jenny Low, from a group called POWER that seeks to make home electrification easier, told the Post. “If you’re trying to add these appliances to your home, the money should be invested in the appliances. You don’t want to put it toward something that’s not needed.”Ninety-eight percent of homes with 100-amp electric panels, typically the smallest size, have room to power more appliances, according to a report published in ScienceDirect in May. Ninety-eight percent of homes with 100-amp electric panels, typically the smallest size, have room to power more appliances, according to a report (Getty Images/iStock)If homeowners do choose to upgrade their electrical panels, it will cost a pretty penny. Maryland electrician Bill Hyman, who is skeptical about the power load that an older panel can handle, said his company upgrades at least one or two breaker boxes a week for about $6,000 to $13,000 per house. “If they tell me they have central AC and an electric dryer, I know it’s overloaded. If you’ve been doing this as long as I’ve been doing this, we know,” Hyman told the Post. “If we followed the code on everything we did, we would have problems. It’s the minimum standard, and minimums are not necessarily the right thing to do.”