Almost everyone asks the same two questions before a panel upgrade: "How long will my power be off?" and "Why does the whole thing take weeks when the work is one day?" Both are fair, and the honest answer surprises people: the electrical work is the fast part. The schedule is driven by PG&E and your city, not by how quickly we can wire a panel.
Here's the realistic start-to-finish timeline for a Bay Area panel or service upgrade, so nothing about the process blindsides you.
The short answer on power being off
On the actual install day, your power is typically off for most of one working day — commonly in the range of 6 to 8 hours while we swap the panel and PG&E disconnects and reconnects the service drop. It is not days. You lose power in the morning and, on a standard same-day reconnect, you have it back by evening. The multi-week part of the timeline happens around that day, mostly as waiting, not as outage.
The full timeline, stage by stage
1. Estimate & scope (days 1-3)
We come out, look at the existing panel and service, do a load calculation, and price the job. If a permit is required — and for a panel upgrade it always is — that gets factored in here.
2. Permit (a few days to ~2 weeks)
We pull the electrical permit from your city in our name. Many Peninsula and South Bay cities issue panel-upgrade permits over the counter or online within a few days; some take a couple of weeks depending on workload. This runs in parallel with the next step, so it rarely becomes the bottleneck.
3. PG&E scheduling — the real wait (often ~3-6 weeks)
This is the stage nobody warns you about. To replace the panel, PG&E has to disconnect the service drop and later reconnect it, and that disconnect has to be scheduled with PG&E in advance. Depending on PG&E's backlog and the type of disconnect, scheduling that window commonly takes on the order of several weeks to about a month. If the job also requires a meter spot change or service rerouting, it can take longer and may involve a PG&E planner. Nothing you or we do speeds PG&E up — but a good electrician files the request early and sequences everything else around it so you're not waiting twice.
4. Install day — power off (~one working day)
On the scheduled day: PG&E (or the electrician, depending on the disconnect type) kills the power, we remove the old panel and install and wire the new one, and your home is without power during the work. This is the 6-8 hour window. Plan around it like a planned outage — more on that below.
5. City inspection (same day to a few days)
Before the home can be permanently re-energized on the new panel, the city inspector has to approve the work. In some cities we can get a same-day or next-day inspection; in others it's a few days. Until it passes, the new panel can't be signed off.
6. PG&E final reconnect & sign-off (same day to ~1 week)
Once the city signs off, PG&E does the permanent reconnect / re-energization on the new service. On many same-day jobs this is folded into install day; when an inspection has to come first, there can be a short additional wait for PG&E to return.
So how long is the whole thing, really?
From "yes, let's do it" to fully finished and inspected, a typical Bay Area panel upgrade runs roughly 4 to 8 weeks — and the overwhelming majority of that is waiting on PG&E to schedule, not work. The actual no-power window inside all of that is usually a single working day. Anyone promising you a finished, inspected, PG&E-reconnected panel upgrade "this week" is either skipping the permit, skipping inspection, or hasn't accounted for PG&E — and that should make you ask questions.
How to plan for the day your power is off
- Fridge & freezer: keep them closed; a full freezer holds safe temperature for most of a day if you don't open it. For a long window, a cooler with ice for the essentials is cheap insurance.
- Work from home: assume no Wi-Fi or desk power for the day — plan a coffee-shop or office day, or charge a laptop battery bank the night before.
- Medical or critical equipment: tell us in advance if anything in the home cannot lose power, so we can plan for it.
- Garage doors & gates: know where the manual release is — they won't open on power.
- Heating/cooling & EV: pre-condition the house and top up the car the night before.
How a good electrician minimizes your downtime
The downtime isn't fully in our control — PG&E owns the disconnect — but the sequencing is. We file the PG&E request and the permit early and in parallel, line up the city inspection to follow the install immediately, and aim for a same-day reconnect wherever the disconnect type allows it. The goal is one clean power-off window and no avoidable second wait.
Talk to Fox Electric
If you're weighing a panel or service upgrade, we'll give you a realistic timeline for your city and PG&E situation up front — not a best-case fantasy — and we handle the permit and PG&E coordination as part of the job. We serve San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
Call (650) 550-0719 to talk through your upgrade. Related reading: who pulls the permit and why it protects you, what a panel upgrade actually costs in the Bay Area, and whether your panel can handle an EV, heat pump, and induction range.
