Commercial Power Upgrades: Increasing Your Service Capacity in Metro Vancouver

The signs your commercial service is undersized

Most commercial buildings in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, and Coquitlam were sized to the original tenant load - a shell warehouse, a small retail bay, or a first-generation restaurant. Twenty years later that same 200A single-phase or 400A three-phase service is now feeding a commercial kitchen, a rooftop HVAC upgrade, EV chargers in the parkade, and a production line that never stops.

The symptoms are predictable. Main breakers that trip on the hottest and coldest days of the year. Voltage sag when the compressor or the oven kicks on. Panels that run hot to the touch. New equipment that arrives and cannot be energized because the load calc no longer fits. That is not a maintenance issue - that is a service capacity problem.

What a commercial power upgrade actually involves

Increasing a commercial service is a coordinated project, not just a bigger panel. It starts with a professional load calculation of your existing and planned demand under CEC Section 8, factoring in continuous loads, HVAC, motor starting, EV charging, and any tenant improvement pipeline. From there we design the new service - typically stepping 200A single-phase up to 400A or 600A three-phase, or 400A/600A three-phase up to 800A, 1000A, or 1200A depending on the load profile.

The build includes BC Hydro service application and disconnect coordination, a new CT (current transformer) cabinet where the utility requires it, upsized service entrance conductors, a new main switchboard with metering and distribution, updated grounding and bonding to current CEC requirements, and reconfigured branch distribution to the tenants or departments that are actually growing.

Every step is pulled under a City of Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, or applicable municipal electrical permit and closed out with a Technical Safety BC inspection, so your insurer, your landlord, and your future buyer all see clean documentation.

BC Hydro coordination and timeline

The single-largest variable on a commercial upgrade is the BC Hydro service application. Depending on the service class, whether new primary is required, and whether a transformer swap is needed at the vault or pad, coordination windows range from a few weeks to several months. We open that application on day one and drive it in parallel with the design so the field build is not waiting on the utility.

On the ground, the switchover itself is usually scheduled after hours or over a weekend to keep operations running. For tenants that cannot lose power at all, we build the new switchgear alongside the existing service and cut over live with a make-before-break sequence.

What it costs, and how we quote it

Commercial service upgrades are priced against the load, the switchgear class, the run length from the vault, the demolition scope on the old gear, and the after-hours factor. Every Electric Hero commercial upgrade is quoted as a fixed price after a site visit and a written load calculation - not a time-and-materials guess. You get a clear scope, a construction schedule, a permit and inspection line item, and a warranty commitment before anyone lifts a wrench.

Who this is for across Metro Vancouver

Electric Hero delivers commercial service upgrades for warehouses, light industrial, restaurants, commercial kitchens, breweries, medical and dental clinics, gyms, dealerships, strata parkades adding EV charging, tenant improvement general contractors, and property managers across Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, North Vancouver, Langley, and Delta.

If your building is planning a tenant improvement, an equipment upgrade, an HVAC replacement, or an EV charging rollout, a service capacity assessment is the first document you want in hand. It is a one-visit report that tells you exactly what you can add today, what the upgrade path looks like, and what it will cost - so the rest of the project stops guessing.