If you’ve been looking into heat pumps, EV chargers, solar installations, hot tubs or electric water heaters, you may have heard that you need to upgrade your home’s electrical service in order to make any of these changes happen. Maybe your home has a 100-amp service and now it’s going to need a 200-amp service in order to install a hot tub. We are here to discuss why that may not be necessary and why load sharing could be highly beneficial and save you thousands, and/or make these upgrades possible when an electrical service upgrade had rendered them unfeasible. It just might be one of the most important strategies for electrifying homes affordably in BC and avoiding adding grid-strain.
As we move toward more electric heating, cooling and transportation, many homeowners discover their existing electrical service isn’t quite big enough for everything they want to add. The common advice used to be “upgrade to a 200-amp service,” but in a lot of cases, that upgrade is far more expensive – and far less necessary – than people realize.
Load sharing often makes a service upgrade unnecessary, and it reduces stress on the electrical grid overall.
What Is Connected Load and Why Does That Matter Here?
How the Current Electrical Code Works
The BC Electrical Code (which comes from Canadian Electrical Code) assumes that every major electrical device in your home could run at full power at the exact same time.
That includes:
• heat pump
• backup electric heat strips
• electric water heater
• clothes dryer
• kitchen range
• EV charger
• suite appliances
• lights
• plugs
• and everything else
Under the code, your service must be sized big enough so that if all of those devices turned on together, your home could handle it safely without tripping breakers or overloading the grid.
This is called connected load, and it’s calculated using formulas written into the code. It has nothing to do with how people actually use their homes – it’s just a maximum theoretical scenario based on the absolute extreme.
Why This Isn’t the Same as Real Life
In the real world, your home will almost never run everything at once (this would be incredibly difficult to do). Real usage is called demonstrated load, and it’s usually much lower.
For example:
• Heat pumps modulate and rarely run at full draw
• Washers/Dryers only run occasionally
• Water heaters run only when heating water
• EV chargers mostly run at night and can be load-managed
• Ovens cycle their elements
• Even during “busy hours,” most homes are far below the theoretical peak
Demonstrated load studies show that homes with modern electric equipment often use far less power than the code assumes.
Why This Matters
Because the code assumes maximum-possible load, many homes are told they need: a 200-amp or 300-amp panel, which is a very costly electrical service upgrade, even when their real-world electrical usage would never come close to those values.
This causes unnecessary upgrades, long delays waiting for utility work, extra cost for homeowners and ultimately more strain on the local grid at a time when utilities are struggling to provide the power being requested of them.
The Solution
Tools like load sharing and demand management let certain appliances take turns drawing power. This keeps real peak demand low and prevents everything from running at once.
Demonstrated load calculcations for determining needs plus load management strategies give a much more realistic and efficient picture of how much electrical service a home actually needs.
What Load Sharing Actually Is
Load sharing is a device or system that automatically controls when certain high-demand appliances operate. Instead of everything running at once, the system manages electrical demand by giving priority to one device and temporarily pausing or throttling the other.
Think of it like traffic lights for electrical loads. Not everything needs a green light at the same time. Are you ever charging your car and using every light and appliance, and outlet in your house simultaneously? Me neither.
This is especially useful for appliances that:
• draw large amounts of power
• do not need continuous power
• only operate occasionally
Examples include EV chargers, electric dryers, eletric washers, electric water heaters, and sometimes even heat pump backup elements.
Why BC Homes Need Load Sharing More Than Ever
With heat pumps becoming standard in new builds, EV chargers becoming common and electric water heaters increasing in popularity, BC homes simply have more electrical needs than they used to.
Load sharing helps keep your actual peak load well below what the calculations assume.
This can prevent:
• expensive service upgrades
• delays waiting for BC Hydro infrastructure improvements
• overloaded circuits
• nuisance breaker trips
Many homeowners are surprised to learn that their existing service, when paired with load management, is more than capable of handling their new equipment.
The Most Common Applications for Load Sharing
Here are the situations where load sharing makes a big difference.
EV Chargers
Electric vehicle chargers are one of the highest peak loads in a home, but EV charging is flexible. You can charge overnight, you can slow the charging rate or you can pause charging temporarily.
Load sharing devices can automatically reduce or stop EV charging when the home reaches its peak load, then restart it once the load drops again.
Electric Dryers
Dryers use a lot of power, but only in short cycles. Load management can pause the dryer if another major load needs priority.
Electric Water Heaters
Electric water heaters heat in cycles rather than all day. They are perfect for load sharing since a brief pause won’t affect hot water availability.
Heat Pumps with Electric Backup Elements
The auxiliary heat strips in heat pumps draw significant power. A load-sharing device can delay or limit those heat strips when the home is close to peak demand.
How Load Sharing Helps the Electrical Grid
Kelowna and many other BC communities are already pushing the limits of their local electrical infrastructure. With more homes adding EV chargers and heat pumps at the same time, utilities face pressure to upgrade equipment faster than planned. When a home installs a 300-amp service, the utility provider is required to have all of that capacity available for that home, even if that home never uses more than 100-amps. This is a real issue and something that can be addressed by changing what our recommendations are for existing homes when it comes to recommending electrical service upgrades.
Load sharing helps by:
• lowering overall peak demand
• shifting electrical use to off-peak times
• preventing mini-grid overloads in neighbourhoods
• reducing or delaying the need for costly transformer upgrades
In other words, load management isn’t just good for the homeowner. It benefits everyone, community-wide.
Why Builders Should Care
Builders often hesitate to add EV chargers or heat pump backup elements because they’re worried about triggering the need for a 200-amp, 300-amp, 400-amp service. That can add thousands of dollars and weeks or months of delays waiting for the infrastructure to do so.
Load sharing gives builders the flexibility to:
• meet Step Code or Zero Carbon mechanical requirements
• future-proof homes
• include EV-ready infrastructure
• avoid triggering unnecessary service upgrades
For many projects, especially in Kelowna’s dense neighbourhoods or older subdivisions, load management is becoming essential to keep electrification practical or even possible in this moment in time.
What Homeowners Should Know Before Adding Load Sharing
If you’re thinking about adding a heat pump, EV charger or electric hot water system, here’s what you should consider:
• Talk to your electrician about your existing service capacity
• Ask if a load-sharing device (often $300–$800 installed) can avoid a service upgrade
• Check whether your equipment is compatible with load management
• Consider your lifestyle needs, like charging an EV overnight instead of mid-day
In most cases, the cost of adding load management is a tiny fraction of what a service upgrade costs and doesn’t involve wait times for the utility to be able to complete the upgrade.
Final Thoughts
Electrification doesn’t have to mean upgrading your entire electrical service or placing extra strain on the grid. Load sharing is a smart, affordable and increasingly necessary tool for helping homes handle modern electrical demands without unnecessary upgrades. It’s really just smart planning and I expect to see this more and more going forward.
BC Hydro even has rebates available for EV Power Management Devices (load sharing devices)
Learn more details on load sharing or Power Management Devices from the Building Decarbonization Alliance here.
BC Housing put out “The Homeowner’s Conversational Guide to Electrical Load Management” – read the document here.
If you’re unsure whether load sharing could work for your home or project, get in touch. We aren’t electricians and don’t have all the answers but we know people who are and love finding out more so we can help our customers and community better.
