Home / Panel Upgrade & Replacement
Primary service · Smyrna & Cobb County
The short answer
A panel upgrade replaces your home's electrical panel — often an aging 100-amp or Federal Pacific unit — with a modern 200-amp panel. In Smyrna, the work requires a city electrical permit (typically a 5–10 business day review) and brings your system up to the current electrical code.
The Smyrna context
Two forces meet in Cobb County: an older housing stock, and a modern electrical load it was never designed for.
A large share of Smyrna's homes were built between the 1950s and the 1980s — squarely inside the era when Federal Pacific Electric (FPE) "Stab-Lok" panels were among the most widely installed panels in America. Those panels are flagged today by many insurers and home inspectors because of documented concerns about breakers failing to trip under fault conditions. That's not a scare tactic; it's the reason FPE panels routinely show up as findings in home-sale inspections and insurance underwriting across the county. If your panel door says Federal Pacific or Stab-Lok, it's worth a conversation regardless of how well it seems to be working.
At the same time, the load side of the equation has changed. EV chargers, heat pumps, induction ranges, and home offices all pull from a panel that may have been generous in 1978 and is maxed out now. Upgrading from 100-amp to 200-amp service isn't about excess — it's about matching the panel to how homes are actually used today.
Warning signs
Capacity, in plain language
| Service size | What it handles | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|
| 100 amps | Lights, refrigerator, HVAC, standard kitchen — the load profile most older Smyrna homes were built around. | Adding a Level 2 EV charger (typically a 40–60A circuit by itself), a heat pump, or an induction range often pushes total demand past what 100A service can safely supply. |
| 200 amps | Everything above, plus EV charging, solar interconnection, electrified heating and cooking — with headroom left over. | Rarely a limitation for a single-family home. This is the modern standard for new construction and upgrades. |
Not sure which you have? The main breaker at the top of your panel is usually labeled — or a load calculation answers it definitively, along with how much capacity you actually have left.
Permits & code
Panel replacement is permitted work — and that's a feature, not a hassle. A permitted, inspected upgrade is documentation your insurer and any future buyer will want to see.
The City of Smyrna calculates general building permit fees at approximately $7 per $1,000 of construction cost, plus a 10% records fee and a $15 technology fee, with a $125 minimum. Residential permit reviews typically run 5–10 business days. We handle the permit process as part of the job.