Choosing the Right Electrical Panel Size for Sarasota Homes With Modern Loads | CoHarbor Electric

We get asked about panel sizing a lot, and the question usually comes wrapped around something else. “We’re adding a pool — do we need a bigger panel?” or “We just bought an EV and the charger guy said we might need an upgrade.” Or sometimes it’s simpler: “The electrician we talked to said we need 200 amps but we have no idea if that’s right.”

It’s a fair thing to want to understand. A panel upgrade is a real investment, and nobody wants to pay for something they don’t need. But nobody wants to pay for a panel that’s undersized for their life in two years, either. So here’s how we actually think about panel sizing for Sarasota homes — what the numbers mean, what drives the decision, and where the common mistakes get made.

The Starting Point: What’s Already in the House

Before anything else, the panel sizing conversation has to start with what’s actually there. We see three common situations when we look at Sarasota homes.

The first is a 100-amp panel, usually in a home built before the early ’90s. Neighborhoods like Gulf Gate Estates, Southgate, the older parts of the South Trail corridor, sections of Bee Ridge — a lot of homes in these areas have been on 100-amp service since they were built. That was standard for decades. It’s not standard anymore.

The second is a 150-amp panel. Some homes got upgraded at some point from original service, or were built during a transitional period when 150 amps was common. These panels have more headroom than 100-amp service, but they still run short when modern loads stack up.

The third is a home already on 200-amp service. If that’s where you’re starting, the conversation shifts to whether the panel has enough circuit spaces and whether the existing load leaves room for what’s being added — not whether the service size needs to change.

Most Sarasota homes that come to us with a panel question are in the first or second category. Forty or fifty years of home improvement, added appliances, and changing lifestyle have quietly outpaced the electrical system the house was built with.

What the Service Size Numbers Actually Mean

100-Amp Service

A hundred amps sounds like a lot until you start adding up what’s drawing from it. A central air conditioner — and in Sarasota, the AC runs essentially year-round — typically pulls 15 to 30 amps depending on the size of the system. An electric water heater is another 18 to 25 amps. A clothes dryer, 24 to 30. The electric range or cooktop if you have one, another 40 to 50 on a dedicated double-pole breaker.

Add in the refrigerator, the kitchen small appliance circuits, the lighting throughout the house, the outlets in every room, and you’re already consuming most of what 100 amps offers before anyone turns on anything unusual. There’s not much left over for a pool pump, an EV charger, a home office with real power demands, or an outdoor kitchen.

The other issue with 100-amp panels is physical space. Most have 20 to 24 circuit slots. In a home that’s had work done over the years, those slots fill up. We’ve opened panels in older Sarasota homes where every slot was taken and someone had installed tandem breakers — two breakers crammed into one slot — as a workaround. Sometimes that’s code-compliant depending on the panel, sometimes it isn’t. Either way, it’s a sign the panel has been maxed out for a while.

150-Amp Service

A step up, and workable in a lot of situations. A 150-amp panel on a home that doesn’t have unusually heavy loads and isn’t adding major new circuits can be adequate. But the margin for error is narrower than people expect. If that home then adds an EV charger — which needs a dedicated 50-amp circuit — and is running a pool system and has a guest suite addition in the plans, 150 amps starts to look tight pretty quickly.

The load calculation is what actually tells the story. Eyeballing it isn’t enough.

200-Amp Service

This is the standard recommendation for Sarasota homes today, both for new construction and for service upgrades. Two hundred amps provides meaningful headroom over the home’s baseline load — enough to support a pool, an EV charger, a home office, outdoor living circuits, and still have room for whatever comes next without immediately backing into another upgrade.

Most 200-amp panels also come with 40 or more circuit spaces, which solves both the amperage and the space problem at once. For a home in the middle of a remodel, or one that has projects planned, that space is worth having.

When 400 Amps Comes Up

For most Sarasota homes, 200 amps is the answer. But there are situations where it isn’t enough — particularly in larger homes on Siesta Key, Bird Key, Lido Key, or in estate properties that have significant square footage, multiple large AC systems, full home automation, extensive landscape and outdoor lighting, and the kind of amenity stack that high-end Sarasota homes often carry.

Four hundred amps is essentially two 200-amp services tied together. It’s not a common conversation in average residential work, but it comes up in this market more than it would in a lot of other places. When we’re doing panel work on a larger property, we run the load calculation and let the numbers determine whether 200 or 400 is right — we don’t assume one way or the other based on the size of the house alone.

The Load Calculation: Why the Math Matters

Panel sizing should never be a guess. NEC Article 220 provides the methodology for calculating the minimum service size a home requires, based on square footage, the type of loads present, and what’s being added. The calculation accounts for general lighting and outlet load based on the home’s square footage, the demand load for fixed appliances like the AC, water heater, dryer, and range, and any new loads being added to the system.

What the load calculation often surfaces in Sarasota homes: the actual calculated demand is already higher than the existing service size, even before adding anything new. We’ve run numbers on homes where the existing 100-amp service was theoretically supporting a load that calculated out above 150 amps. The breakers weren’t tripping constantly, but the margin was essentially gone. Add one substantial new load and something gives.

Running an honest load calculation is part of our process before any panel sizing recommendation. It’s not optional, and it’s what separates a real recommendation from a guess.

How Specific Sarasota Projects Drive the Decision

Pools

Sarasota has a lot of pools. The climate makes them practical for the better part of the year, and in established neighborhoods like Palmer Ranch, Lakewood Ranch, and the waterfront communities along the bay, they’re common. Pool electrical load varies by setup, but a typical residential pool system includes at least one pump motor drawing 15 to 20 amps on a dedicated circuit, and often much more. A pool heat pump — useful through the cooler months when Gulf temperatures drop — can draw 30 to 50 amps on its own dedicated circuit. Add the automation controller, underwater lighting, and spa equipment if there is one, and you’re looking at multiple dedicated circuits and meaningful additional load.

NEC Article 680 governs pool electrical work, and it requires GFCI protection and specific bonding for pool equipment — all of which adds circuit count regardless of amperage. When we’re doing pool electrical work in Sarasota, we’re confirming the panel has both the capacity and the spaces to support the full installation before we start running wire.

EV Charging

Level 2 EV chargers — the kind that charge a car overnight rather than over three days — need a dedicated 240-volt, 50-amp circuit. That’s one circuit, but it’s a substantial one. On a panel that’s already carrying a full household load, a new 50-amp circuit needs both an available space and the service headroom to support it.

For homes already on 200-amp service with available panel space, adding an EV charger is usually straightforward. For homes on 100-amp service with a full panel, the EV charger becomes the event that finally tips the panel upgrade conversation. We’d rather have that conversation before someone buys the charger and finds out their panel can’t support it.

One planning note: if there’s any chance you’ll have two EVs in the household in the next several years, factor a second 50-amp circuit into the panel sizing now. Adding it later is simple if the capacity is there. It’s another upgrade conversation if it isn’t.

Remodels and Additions

A kitchen remodel, a bathroom addition, a converted bonus room, a new guest suite — all of these add circuits. A kitchen remodel might need a dedicated circuit for the range, one for the dishwasher, one for the microwave, and a couple of small appliance circuits. That’s four or five new breaker spaces minimum. A full guest suite addition could need eight to ten.

In the older Sarasota homes we work in most frequently — particularly in Gulf Gate, Southgate, and the South Trail neighborhoods — the panel is often already full before the remodel starts. The remodel doesn’t create the panel problem; it reveals it. The practical answer is almost always to handle the panel upgrade as part of the remodel scope rather than trying to squeeze new circuits into a panel that has nowhere to put them.

Whole-Home Generators

Standby generators have become a serious consideration in Sarasota after recent storm seasons. A properly sized whole-home generator — the kind that runs on natural gas or propane, starts automatically, and can power the entire house — needs a transfer switch and a service-side connection sized to take advantage of the generator’s output.

Installing a 22-kilowatt generator on a 100-amp service is a mismatch. The generator is capable of powering a modern home; the panel is the bottleneck. If generator capability is part of the plan, it needs to be part of the panel sizing conversation from the start.

Circuit Spaces Matter as Much as Amperage

This is worth calling out specifically because it’s where a lot of well-intentioned panel upgrades fall short. Amperage and circuit space are two different things. A 200-amp panel that only has 20 circuit spaces is going to fill up just as fast as a 100-amp panel with 20 spaces — the difference is how much current it can carry, not how many circuits it can hold.

When we specify a replacement panel for a Sarasota home, we’re recommending a panel with at least 40 spaces, and often more for homes with substantial planned projects. The extra spaces don’t cost much and they’re worth having. The alternative is running out of room and having to add a sub-panel — which works, but adds cost and complexity that’s easily avoided by getting the right panel from the start.

What We Tell Homeowners Who Ask

When someone asks us what panel size they need, we don’t answer until we’ve seen the house and run the calculation. The right answer depends on too many variables — square footage, what’s already in the panel, what’s being added, what the homeowner’s plans are for the next five to ten years — for a generic answer to be useful.

What we can say generally: for the majority of Sarasota homes on 100-amp service, 200 amps is the right upgrade. For homes already on 200 amps, the question is usually about available space and load headroom rather than a full service upgrade. For larger homes with significant amenity loads, the numbers get run before a recommendation gets made.

The goal is a panel that handles everything the home needs today, has room for what’s reasonably coming next, and doesn’t require revisiting in two years because it was sized for what was there rather than what was planned.

Let’s Figure Out What Your Sarasota Home Actually Needs

If you’re planning a pool, adding an EV charger, starting a remodel, or your panel is just old and you’re not sure what shape it’s in — we’re happy to come out and take a look.

Coharbor Electric serves Sarasota and the surrounding Southwest Florida area, including Siesta Key, Bird Key, Osprey, Nokomis, Venice, Lakewood Ranch, and Bradenton. We do load calculations, panel assessments, service upgrades, and the full scope of residential electrical work that goes along with them. Licensed, permitted through Sarasota County, and coordinated with FPL.

Reach out through our website or give us a call. We’ll tell you what you actually need — not what sounds right.