The Electrical Service Upgrades in Edmonton Your Utility Provider Won’t Tell You About: $20,000 Electric Bill
All right, welcome back to Halo Power’s YouTube channel. I’m Trevor, and I’m here interviewing, of course, the owner of Halo Power, Kevin Stay.
Kevin, how’s it going today?
Very good, Trevor. Thanks for having me in the studio again.
You betcha. And today we’re going to be talking about what homeowners in Sherwood Park should expect when they’re getting a service upgrade.
So Kevin, you do a lot of these.
Yes. [music]
In in Sherwood Park, in the Edmonton area. So tell me, what is, you know, the first thing that [music] a homeowner should expect when they’re getting a service upgrade?
What Homeowners Need To Know First
It Is Not Just Replacing An Electrical Panel
Yeah, absolutely. And and you know, this has definitely been the year for service upgrades. There’s there’s there’s a lot driving it, right?
Whether people are doing renovations, adding new things to their home and that, but there’s a lot to know about what’s involved because it’s not just a matter of replacing the electrical panel in your home. So you’ve got a breaker that now says 200 amps on it, right?
So the first thing that homeowners need to know is that they have to get in touch with their utility provider, being EPCOR if you’re in the Edmonton area, or Fortis, which is, of course, Sherwood Park, Strathcona County, and most of the surrounding area around Edmonton [snorts], and uh, get the wheels in motion to see, first of all, can they upgrade their service with the existing infrastructure in their area?
Because you got to remember, there’s a lot of old neighborhoods, especially in Edmonton area, and you know, the power infrastructure in that neighborhood dated probably ready for some updates and upgrades already.
And uh, you may find that, you know, the the area can’t support another 200 amp service upgrade, especially if three or four of your neighbors have already done one.
So, first things first, find out from your utility provider. Can I do an upgrade?
The next thing is, what’s it going to cost? And I’m not talking about what the cost is going to be from a contractor like myself. What’s the cost going to be to you from the utility provider?
If you have an old overhead service to your home, and a lot of neighborhoods in Edmonton have that, Sherwood Park, not so much, that’s the least expensive route to go for a service upgrade because, in most cases, the utility provider, EPCOR, Fortis, they’re not going to charge anything to run that new 200 amp line to your home.
That will, they’ll include that because they really don’t have to do a whole lot of work. Uh now, with that being said, they may have to do some upgrades in the alley. It might mean changing out a transformer and that. That’s where you you you got to make sure that you’re not going to incur any of those costs for the upgrades on your infrastructure.
When you have a newer home, or home built say 1970s and up, even some early 60s and that, uh, and you have an underground service coming in. So, where you’ve got an underground cable that comes up into your meter socket on the side of your house, that’s when things get pricey because the entire line back to the source, whether that’s uh the transformer down the street across the road, it’s going to need to be upgraded.
I don’t think we’ve ever ran into an existing home that already had a 200 amp rated cable in the ground from 50 years ago. You know, no one was that forward thinking because why in the heck would you need 200 amps 50 years ago?
Yeah, that’s right. I mean, 50 years ago, houses only had eight circuits at the most, right?
That’s right.
Plugs and lights and uh, you know, kitchen, that’s it.
Yeah. Yeah. We were not connecting all of the devices, fancy gadgets, appliances, and whatnot to our home.
Now, it’s it’s very, it’s just status quo, right?
So when you got to get that line replaced, you have to know where does the line end from what the utility company will do for you and what your contractor is going to do for you.
And usually [clears throat] that is at your property line.
So when you get that quote from, say, EPCOR to do an underground service upgrade, and let’s say it comes in at $20,000, and I know that sounds ridiculous, but be prepared. That’s what it could cost you or more in the city of Edmonton.
That just gets that new utility line to your property line. Does not bring it right up to your house or into the meter or into the panel or anything like that.
So, there’s the first big cost. Uh after that, the contractor you’re hire you hire is responsible for getting it the rest of the way into your home.
And of course, that’s going to mean some sort of excavating, whether it’s trenching, maybe they use a hydrovac method to make the trench, or you could do directional drilling, but it all costs big bucks.
And uh, you know, these are all the things that you need to prepare for uh when you’re saying to yourself, “It’s time for me to get an upgrade.”
Okay. Now, let’s say somebody wants to get this upgrade. What are some of the reasons why people nowadays are needing an upgrade, you know, say from there’s a couple of different scenarios.
Okay. So, people who get a service upgrade from 60 to 100 and then from 100 to 200. So, let’s talk about those two different scenarios.
Why Homeowners Upgrade From 60 To 100 Amps
Insurance, Home Sales, And Older Electrical Services
Absolutely. Now, if you got an old 60 amp service on your detached family home, likely you live in an old neighborhood and your insurance company has not chased you down yet to say you need to upgrade, but that’s the biggest driver of homes that are needing an upgrade from 60 amp to 100 amp.
You know, you could have a senior citizen that lives in that home that’s been in there for 50 years and, you know, for him or her, you may not need the 100 amp service.
But wait till you get that letter in the mail when the insurance company finally realizes, hey, this old home still has an old 60 amp service.
They’ll give you a set amount of days, could be 60 days to get that service upgraded or they’ll void your insurance, and nobody wants that to happen.
No.
So, with 60 to 100 amp service upgrades, typically they come up when there’s a sale of the home because nobody really knows that that house has a 60 amp service until it goes up for sale and it sells.
And it’s either going to be the potential buyer is putting it in the uh in this in the purchase agreement that will buy it providing the services upgraded, or the house is sold and the new buyer is now responsible to get that upgrade done.
Uh chances are they knew about it because hopefully they got a home inspection done. But if anything, their insurance company is going to ask, and that’s where now the clock is ticking to get that upgrade done.
That’s right. And the bank will not give you a mortgage without insurance.
There you go. So, a bunch of reasons, you know, why you need to be aware of if you do buy a house with a 60 amp service, you are 100% going to have to get it upgraded.
Yes. Yeah.
Okay. So, talk let’s talk about uh people in Edmonton and Sherwood Park who need to get one from 100 to 200. Maybe not need, but they want 100 to 200.
Okay. Yeah. Well, and that’s the thing, right? It’s because of what they want to do to their home.
The home was built with 100 amp service. And for most people, if you are family of four, you got an electric oven, you got an electric clothes dryer, maybe you put air conditioning on your home and that’s it, your 100 amp service will suffice.
You’re not going to be over when we do a load calculation.
But it’s when you start looking at purchasing a hot tub. Is probably the number one thing that we see is customer wants to get a hot tub.
Second to that, EVs. EV charging is huge.
The uh customer that buys an EV and figures that because the dealership told it, they just told them they could plug it into the uh regular 120 volt 15 amp wall outlet in their garage and charge it.
Yes, you can. After four or five days, you’ll be all charged up ready to rock, right? But that’s not ideal for anybody that’s using that EV. So, they need more power available so they can charge their EV.
Uh basement suites, you know, there’s a big push in Edmonton to we need to be able to provide more affordable housing.
So, many homeowners want to jump on putting a basement suite or a garden suite or something like that in their home, on their property. Your existing 100 amp service likely will not suffice.
You may get, you may just squeak through on a uh single detached home with a suite and be right at the 100 amp max, but the moment you want to add anything else like air conditioning, now you’re going to be over when we do a load calculation for your home.
So, and there’s other things that are big power draws. Steam showers, boy, steam showers are wonderful, very relaxing. They use a lot of electricity.
So, air conditioning, you know, if you only need one AC on your home, yeah, you’re probably going to be okay with the 100 amp service, but we see big homes that have three, four furnaces and each furnace has an air conditioner on it, right?
You could have 80, 90 amps of AC load on there. So, this all gets taken into consideration.
And, uh, you know, previously where a 200 amp service seemed to be what you would only have on a big mansion, not anymore.
You know, depending what you’re putting in your home, you may require that for just your regular, you know, 1,800 square foot uh two-story home in Edmonton or Sherwood Park.
Okay, let’s talk about different options.
All right.
Let’s talk about load management because, you know, that’s one option that people have if they want to, you know, get that one extra upgrade, let’s say a hot tub, then they they don’t necessarily need to get that upgraded service, but they could use some load management.
Talk about that.
Load Management And Alternatives To A Full Service Upgrade
How Load Shedding Devices Work
Yeah, absolutely. And load shedding is is a great option.
Basically, what a the load management system does, or a load shedding device does, is it monitors how much electricity is going through your main service conductors coming into the home.
When it senses that it’s exceeded 80% or more of the capacity of your fir of your home of your service, so let’s say you got a 100 amp service and you’ve you’re now drawn 81 amps of load on that service.
This load shedding device is going to disconnect the non-critical load that you choose to connect to it.
And in most cases, that could be the air conditioner, could be your hot tub, EVs of course, electric vehicles, that you know, that’s really where energy management systems came to be was because of EV charging.
That would, that was where we first really saw it in the industry. It was being able to make that transition to use that device for uh other loads in your home because at first it was, you know, EV charging, you need an energy management system.
But bottom line is it’s a affordable alternative to a service up upgrade, providing you’re willing to make some concessions and know that, you know, should you be drawing too much power on your home, you’re going to lose power to that appliance, device, whatever it is, for a set amount amount of time, right?
And that time could be, you know, say 20 minutes, because what we want to have happen is the load to settle down in your home until it drops uh below the threshold of that 80%, and then everything comes back on.
So, we do a lot of load management systems because people just about choke sometimes when they find out how much it costs to do a 200 amp underground service upgrade in Edmonton.
Now, that load manager sounds like the best solution you could possibly have.
And, you know, we had a home in uh in Terwillegar in the Edmonton area.
Big home. They had two air conditioners, they had a hot tub, and they bought a Tesla.
And so, I mean, you know yourself that you’re you’re way over on that 100 amp service.
And the cost of a 200 amp upgrade to that home was going to be about $30,000.
Uh we were able to put in a dual channel energy management system. It’s one of the more uh more [clears throat] sophisticated energy management systems.
So that could control two loads. So we were able to hook up their hot tub and their Tesla to this unit, and the load calculation came out under 100 amps or, you know, right around 100 amps because when you put that load on your load shedding device, we no longer have to take it into consideration when we’re doing a load calculation for your home.
So great option. You just have to understand you know what it does.
Sure. There’s some trade-offs there.
100%. Yes.
Yeah. That’s great. So, is there anything else that you want people to know if they’re going to opt for a service upgrade in Sherwood Park or Edmonton?
Solar, Generators, And Choosing The Right Electrician
Planning For Solar And Backup Generator Systems
Well, [clears throat] if you’re considering putting solar on your home, then you’re going to need to, most likely going to need to look at upgrading your electrical equipment.
Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to do a 200 amp service upgrade, but in order to add a decent amount of solar to your home, there’s a good chance you’re going to have to replace your equipment.
So, that is 200 amp rated. That doesn’t mean you’ve got a 200 amp main breaker in your panel, but you’re going to have an electrical panel that has a what’s called the bus bar rating, where all those breakers connect in and all the magic happens down that copper aluminum bar, to be rated for.
Ideally, 225 amps is what the solar guys are looking for.
So, uh that’s another situation where you are upgrading your equipment, but you’re not spending all the money on bringing in that new underground line.
A lot of people that are looking at solar opt to go for the full upgrade anyways because they have other, you know, they’re being forward thinking.
The solar is one thing, but they still want to have, you know, hot tub, EV, AC, you name it, it can be on there as well.
And backup generator.
Backup generator as well. Yeah. We love our backup generators, right?
That’s right. Yes, we do.
You guys are, are you guys specialize in doing backup generators as well?
That’s right. We’re a Generac dealer, sales and service. We can do uh warranty, repair, servicing on on your generator.
And we travel. We look after, you know, central, northern Alberta, whatever we need to do to uh make sure that that generator is in tiptop shape.
And uh yeah, ready to go to power your home.
And if you’re looking to put a backup generator system on your home, we’re your guys.
Stay away from the uh electrical companies out there that are dabbling in generators. They may be able to hook it up, but if it doesn’t work or there’s a problem, they’re going to throw their hands up and they’re going to go, “Well, it passed inspection. You’re on your own.”
And then you’re going to be calling us anyways, seeing it happen.
Yeah. Then you’re on your own.
Well, if you are somebody who is in the Edmonton Sherwood Park area and you’re looking for an electrician, of course, look no further than Halo. They’re one of the top rated.
If you don’t have to take my word for it, go to their reviews. They’re one of the top rated electricians at Sherwood Park.
Go take a look at the reviews and give them a call. They’ll be happy to help you and walk you through any of these scenarios when it comes to service upgrades.
We’ll see you guys on the next video.
Thank you, Trevor. See you next time.
All right.