Switchboard upgrades
in Perth.

The clearest signs are ceramic or rewireable fuses instead of circuit breakers, no safety switches (RCDs) on your power and lighting circuits, breakers that keep tripping, flickering lights, a burning smell near the board, or a board that's more than 20–30 years old. You may also need an upgrade simply to make room for new load — adding solar, an EV charger or a new air conditioner can be the trigger. We'll inspect your board for free and give you honest advice — not an upsell.

As a rough guide: a safety-switch retrofit starts around $500, a partial board upgrade is around $1,000, and a full board replacement runs about $2,000–$4,500+ (three-phase costs more because the switches, RCDs and enclosure are all larger). The price depends on how many circuits you have, the board's condition, and whether the wiring throws up any faults along the way. For the full cost breakdown see our 2026 guide to switchboard upgrades in Perth, and you'll always get an exact, upfront quote after a free site visit.

We replace your old board with a new, compliant enclosure fitted with modern circuit breakers and safety switches (RCDs or RCBOs), then re-terminate and clearly label every circuit. We assess your home's power needs first so the board has capacity for what you run now and what you might add later — solar, aircon or an EV charger. All work is done to AS/NZS 3000 and tested before sign-off.

Most residential switchboard upgrades take anywhere from a few hours to most of a day, depending on the size of the board and what we find in the wiring. Your power is off while we do the swap, so we plan the window with you in advance — that way freezers stay cold and you're not caught out.

If your board has no safety switches or still runs ceramic fuses, yes — modern RCDs and RCBOs cut the power in a fraction of a second when there's a fault, which is the difference that protects your family from a serious shock or an electrical fire. It also stops nuisance tripping and gives you the capacity to add solar, aircon or an EV charger without overloading the board. If your board is already safe and compliant, we'll tell you straight that you don't need one.

An RCD (safety switch) protects against earth leakage — the fault that causes electric shock — and usually covers several circuits at once. An RCBO does that same earth-leakage protection PLUS overload protection on a single circuit, so a fault on one circuit doesn't knock out the rest of the house. A board with an RCBO on every circuit is the modern best-practice setup, and it's what we fit on most upgrades.