Commercial Electrical Service & Panel Upgrades in San Jose
200A to 800A. Meter Stacks. Switchgear.

There is no honest flat number, and any contractor who gives one before measuring your load is guessing. A commercial service or panel upgrade is priced off the actual scope: the new service amperage and phase (a 200A single-phase upgrade is a fraction of an 800A three-phase service), whether the work is a panel swap or a full main-switchboard replacement, the service configuration (overhead mast versus underground lateral, single meter-main versus a multi-tenant meter stack), and whether PG&E or Silicon Valley Power has to set a new transformer or pull a new service lateral. The single biggest cost driver most owners do not anticipate is downtime — keeping a building energized during a cutover with temporary power and after-hours labor costs more than a daytime shutdown, but it saves a day of lost revenue. Cali Rollin Electric performs an NEC 220 load calculation on your real connected load and provides a written, line-item quote before any work begins. We do not put a price on a service upgrade before we measure what your building actually draws.

In most cases, yes. A full daytime shutdown is the simplest path, but for restaurants, medical offices, manufacturing, and multi-tenant buildings a lost operating day is expensive, so we plan around it. Depending on your building, that can mean a temporary power feed during the changeover, an after-hours or weekend cutover window, or a phased approach where we energize the new service and migrate circuits in stages. All energized work is performed under an NFPA 70E energized-work plan with the correct personal protective equipment and boundaries — this is the work where shortcuts get people hurt, and we do not take them. During the service assessment we will tell you honestly which approach your building supports and what the trade-off is between cost and downtime.

Service size is determined by an NEC Article 220 load calculation, not by square footage or a rule of thumb. We total your connected load — lighting, HVAC and rooftop units, kitchen or process equipment, receptacle loads, dedicated equipment, and any planned EV charging or electrification — and apply the code demand factors and continuous-load adjustments. A small retail or office tenant often lands at a 200A to 400A service; a full-service restaurant, a multi-tenant building, or light manufacturing commonly needs 400A to 800A, frequently three-phase at 208V or 480V. If you are adding EV charging, electrifying gas equipment, or expanding production, we size for that planned load now so you are not paying for a second upgrade in two years. The load calculation is documented and is what we submit to the city and the utility.

Yes — this is a core part of what we do. Federal Pacific (FPE) Stab-Lok, Zinsco, and Pringle equipment, along with old fused switchboards, are known to fail to clear faults reliably, and many commercial property insurers now flag or refuse to cover buildings that still have them. Replacement involves a load calculation to confirm the new gear is sized correctly, coordination with the utility if the service is being changed at the same time, and an energized-work plan if the building cannot be fully de-energized. We replace the obsolete gear with code-current switchgear or panelboards, label the new panel schedule, and provide documentation you can hand to your insurer or building inspector.

Yes. Apartment buildings, mixed-use properties, and multi-tenant commercial buildings need a meter stack or meter center that provides individual metering per unit plus a house panel for common-area loads. We size the meter stack and the main service to the building's total calculated load, coordinate the metering arrangement with PG&E or Silicon Valley Power to their current specification, and handle the house-panel work for common-area lighting, elevators, EV charging, and amenity loads. For property managers and owners we can also coordinate the work in phases across an occupied building to limit disruption to tenants.

Cali Rollin Electric does both, as the licensed C-10 electrical contractor of record. We pull the electrical permit directly through the city — San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, or whichever jurisdiction your building is in. On the utility side, San Jose and most of the county are served by PG&E, while Santa Clara is served by Silicon Valley Power; we handle the will-serve request, service planning, and the de-energize and re-energize coordination with whichever utility serves your address. You get one point of contact for the permit, the utility, the inspection, and the cutover schedule instead of managing three separate timelines yourself.