Electrical Load

[Mike O'Brien]

I am planning to do some work in preparation for additional electrical load to come on to my system.  My current 200 amp panel is pretty crowded, and with the likely addition of an induction cooktop, heat pump furnace, heat pump water heater, and electric clothes dryer, I will need some more space.  My plan is to add a sub panel to accommodate the new circuits. (I am also planning a sauna in the back yard, which is driving the work).  Any advice on planning for the electrical loads?

[Jill Eikenhorst]

My only suggestion is to do an EV circuit at the same time! Add a 50amp circuit with a NEMA 14-50 outlet near the driveway, and you'll be able to get a plug-in Level 2 charger in the future.

[Matthew veloz]

I would take a look at why your panel is so crowded; do you have a bunch of unit heaters hooked up like we do? Or a handful of positions dedicated to just an outlet or two? 

Earlier this year we shopped around for a few quotes to expand our full panel so we could swap out our gas water heater to a heat pump water heater, and were quoted $5-15K. That made us take a harder look at our panel to figure out where we could condense and swap. After going through a detailed "OK BABY TURN IT OFF. OK TURN IT BACK ON" we found a few opportunities to combine lighting circuits after swapping out for LEDs, and combined a few outlet areas where we anticipated low power needs. A heat pump, fingers crossed getting installed this month, is only going to cost us 30 amps and 2 breaker positions, and it's going to open up half of our panel because we won't need the unit heaters.