100 & 60 Amp to 200 Amp Service Upgrades in Dartmouth & HRM

Is 100 amps enough for a heat pump and a car charger?

Sometimes, and the honest answer is that nobody can tell you from a web page. It depends on what else is in the house: electric hot water, a range, a dryer, baseboards, and what the heat pump and charger actually draw. Plenty of 100 amp houses in HRM take a heat pump without trouble. Adding a car charger on top of one is where 100 amps usually runs out.

What settles it is a load calculation rather than a rule of thumb. It is also worth knowing before you buy the equipment, because finding out afterwards turns one job into two and the second one was not in anybody’s budget.

What is a load calculation, and why does it decide this?

It is a calculation of the largest demand your house can reasonably place on the service at once, worked out from the floor area, the heating, and every fixed appliance, using the method the Canadian Electrical Code sets. It produces a number in amps, and that number is compared against what you have.

It matters because intuition is unreliable here. A big house with oil heat and gas cooking can sit comfortably on 100 amps; a smaller house with electric baseboards, an electric range, electric hot water and a tub can be at its limit already. The calculation is also what an inspector expects to see behind the decision, so it is not paperwork for its own sake.

Does the meter base and the mast have to be replaced too?

Often, yes, and it is the part homeowners do not expect. The service is not just the panel: it is the overhead or underground supply, the mast, the meter base and the cable running in to the panel. Moving to 200 amps means all of it has to be rated for 200 amps, so equipment sized for a 60 amp service in 1965 is replaced along with the panel.

This is also the part that most affects the price between two apparently similar houses. Where the mast lands, what condition the meter base is in, and whether the supply is overhead or underground can make two identical-looking Dartmouth bungalows quite different jobs.

What else does Nova Scotia Power require when you upgrade?

More than people expect, and this is the single most useful thing on this page if you are budgeting. Nova Scotia Power’s bulletin B-02-022 sets out what a single-dwelling service upgrade triggers beyond the service itself. It includes:

• fixing existing hazards, such as ungrounded receptacles that have no GFCI protection
• an outdoor receptacle
• dedicated circuits for the fridge, the furnace or boiler, and the laundry
• AFCI protection on new circuits
• GFCI protection in bathrooms
• interconnected smoke alarms

None of that is an electrician padding a quote. It is what the upgrade is conditional on, and it is why a service upgrade on a house that has not been touched since the seventies is a larger job than the panel on the wall suggests. It is also why it is worth asking for it to be itemised, so you can see which part is the service and which part is the catching-up.

Is this the same as a panel change?

No, and confusing the two is the most common reason a budget is wrong. A panel change replaces a fuse box with a breaker panel and is usually driven by an insurer, a buyer or a failing panel. A service upgrade increases capacity and is usually driven by something new going in.

They frequently happen on the same day because the reasons overlap and because doing them together is cheaper than doing them a year apart. But if nothing new is going into the house, you may need the panel and not the capacity.

What it costs

Nova Scotia Power’s own figure for a panel upgrade is about $5,000 in parts and labour, usually done in a day. Treat that as the starting shape rather than a quote for your house: it does not know about your mast, your meter base, or how many of the B-02-022 items above your house still has outstanding.

That is why this is a job Jamie comes and looks at rather than prices down the phone, and why the load calculation comes before the number. A quote given without seeing the meter base is a guess with a decimal point on it.

There is no Nova Scotia rebate for a service upgrade, including when the upgrade exists only to make a heat pump possible. The 2026 rebates guide covers what is open and what none of it pays for.

Permits, inspection and the power being off

A service upgrade is permitted and inspected work, and the sequence matters more than on most jobs. Nova Scotia Power disconnects the service, the work is done, the installation is inspected, and only then is it reconnected and energised. Jamie arranges the disconnect and the reconnect; you do not book those yourself. None of this is work that falls inside any permit exemption, and our guide to doing your own electrical work here sets out where those exemptions actually stop.

Plan for the house to be without power for the working day, and say when you book if anything in the house makes that harder than an inconvenience. The permit comes from Nova Scotia Power Inspection Services on the province’s behalf, and the work is done to the 2024 Canadian Electrical Code, which Nova Scotia adopted with no amendments.