Do You Need a 200-Amp Service Upgrade?

July 8, 2026

The electrical service that was generous for a 1960s house — 60 or 100 amps, a handful of circuits, one television — is tight for a house with central air, a heat pump, an induction range, a hot tub, a shop, and a car that plugs in.

Signs you are at the limit

  • The panel is full. Every slot used, and maybe a few tandem breakers squeezed in to make room.
  • Lights dim when the A/C or well pump starts. A brief flicker is normal; a noticeable dip across the house is not.
  • You are running extension cords as a permanent solution.
  • It is a fuse box. Functional, sometimes, but a fuse panel almost always means the rest of the system is decades behind.
  • You are adding a big load — EV charger, hot tub, welder, mini-split, finished basement, addition.

What a service upgrade actually involves

It is more than swapping a box on the wall:

  1. Load calculation. We add up the real demand of the house — square footage, HVAC, appliances, and anything you plan to add — and size the service accordingly. For most homes today the answer is 200 amps.
  2. Permit and utility coordination. MidAmerican has to disconnect and reconnect the service drop, and the city inspects the work. We handle the scheduling.
  3. New meter socket, service entrance, and panel. Along with proper grounding and bonding, which is often the part that was never right to begin with.
  4. Circuits transferred and labeled. Every breaker labeled for what it actually controls, with spare capacity left for the next project.
  5. Inspection. Signed off and documented.

Most residential upgrades are a one-day job with a planned power outage in the middle of it.

What it is worth

A service upgrade is not exciting the way a kitchen remodel is. What it buys you is capacity and safety: room to add what you want later without rewiring, an end to the extension-cord shuffle, modern AFCI and GFCI protection where the code now requires it, and a panel an inspector or a buyer's home inspector will not flag.

If you are not sure where your house stands, send a photo of the inside of your panel with a service request, or call (515) 423-8612 and we will tell you what you are working with.