The panel is where most of Rock Island County's electrical trouble eventually shows up. A house built for a refrigerator, a radio, and a few lamps now carries central air, an electric dryer, a microwave, space heaters in February, and sometimes a car. When the service was never enlarged to match, the symptoms are predictable: breakers that trip under normal loads, a panel with no open slots and two wires under one breaker, a fuse box where somebody long ago screwed in a thirty where a fifteen belonged. The fix is a service and panel sized for the house as it is lived in now.
Which panels get replaced first
Three kinds of panels come out of Moline and Rock Island houses more than any others. The first is the original fuse box, still feeding a sixty-amp service in a 1920s bungalow. The second is a panel from one of the brands the industry stopped trusting decades ago, where breakers are documented to stay closed under fault; homeowners find out about those when an inspector or an insurance underwriter names the brand on a letter. The third is a panel that is simply full: a 1960s twenty-space box in a south Moline ranch with a tandem breaker in every slot and an addition or a finished basement still waiting for circuits. In each case the electrician opens the cover, photographs what is there, and writes a quote for the panel, the service, or both.
100 amps or 200
Most upgrades in this county land at 200 amps, and the reason is arithmetic rather than salesmanship. A load calculation adds up the square footage, the fixed appliances, the air conditioning, the range, the dryer, the water heater if it is electric, and any charger or heat pump on the horizon. A 1,400-square-foot ranch with gas heat and a gas range can live comfortably on 100 amps; the same house with an electric range, a heat-pump water heater, and a Level 2 charger cannot. The quote shows the arithmetic so you can see why the number came out the way it did, and if 100 amps is enough, the quote says that too.
How the utility, the city, and the electrician divide the job
A service upgrade touches three parties. MidAmerican Energy owns the drop from the pole and the meter, so the electrician schedules the disconnect and the reconnect with the utility and works between them. The city or the county issues the electrical permit and sends an inspector to look at the new panel, the grounding electrode system, and the bonding before the meter goes back in; Moline, Rock Island, East Moline, Silvis, Milan, Coal Valley, and unincorporated Rock Island County each handle that through their own building department, and the electrician routed to you is registered with the right one. Everything in between — the meter base if it needs replacing, the mast and weatherhead, the service entrance conductors, the panel, the ground rods, the water-pipe bond — is the electrician's work. If the mast comes through the roof and the roof around it needs more than flashing, that piece belongs to a state-licensed roofer and the quote names it.
Subpanels, detached garages, and shops
Not every capacity problem needs a new service. A finished basement in Rock Island, a woodworking shop behind a house in Milan, or a detached garage in East Moline that needs a welder circuit is often best served by a subpanel fed from the main with a properly sized feeder and its own grounding. The electrician sizes the feeder for the run, which on a county-road property toward Coal Valley can be long enough that voltage drop decides the wire gauge. All of it is quoted free before a hole is cut.