Overhead to Underground Electrical Conversion [Xcel Energy, MN]
Complete overview and first hand experience of converting from overhead to underground service within Xcel Energy service area in Minnesota. The project also details and includes moving the service entrance location and associated changes required.
BACKGROUND:
During the planning phase of a home addition it was very obvious we’d have to move our electrical service. We live in a late 60’s walk out rambler and the meter was installed on the back wall of the garage, with overhead lines to a pole half way down our property line and then to a second pole at the corner of the lot. It was so obvious that literally every single trade, sales rep, and friend that stopped by said “but you’re going to have to move that meter and power”. I heard it so much, my standard response became “Well, yeah, I’m also going to have to move that hosta plant and that massive pile of dirt too”.
I’ll detail the process / steps I went through to convert our residential overhead service to underground service and move the service entry location. I am served by Xcel Energy in Minnesota and did the electrical work myself, after a ton of research. This is a large job that takes many weeks so please use this as a guide when planning for any work to be done.
Note: City/County/Authority Having Jurisdiction allows me as the homeowner to do my own electrical work with proper inspection by the state, confirm the rules in your area with the assigned local inspector / AHJ or contact a licensed electrician.
8 STEPS: Overhead to Underground Conversion [Xcel Energy, MN]
The process to convert overhead to underground electrical service in Minnesota within Xcel territory includes the following steps:`.
Design and Planning
Application Process
Permitting
Site Visit
Approval / Contract / Payment
Underground Team
Overhead Team
Project Completion
I’ve detailed each step of the process below.
Design and Planning:
Our electrical configuration was standard for late 60’s homes here in Minnesota. The house started with 100 AMP service in a 16 slot panel. When we moved in a number of the breakers had already been switched to tandem breakers and the panel was a mess (picture below). The meter was mounted directly on the opposite side of the wall to the panel. The meter socket then went up to an overhead mast (shown in first picture of post).
100 AMP 1960’s Residential Electric Service Panel
The new electrical design included moving the meter to the side of the house, roughly 20 ‘ away. This required a new main service panel and disconnect to be added. I found an awesome unit from Schneider Electric that included 200 AMP feed through lugs that allowed us to complete swap the existing panel and converting it to a sub-panel while still bringing the panel up to 200 AMP.
Application Process:
Xcel has a dedicated group to manage service requests such as an overhead to underground conversion. The Building and Remodeling Services page (https://my.xcelenergy.com/BuildingRemodeling/s/) is the starting point of the application. Once an application for service is submitted, it will also require two forms and a copy of the state electrical permit.
Bid Estimate Form
Site Sketch Form
Minnesota Electrical Permit
Permitting:
The Minnesota Board of Electricity allows a homeowner to pull a permit for electrical work, and complete the work, as long as all work follows current NEC requirements and is properly inspected by the state electrical inspector assigned to the area.
https://www.dli.mn.gov/workers/homeowners/electrical-permits-homeowners
After confirming the city (Eden Prairie) didn’t require any local permits, I looked up the assigned inspector in the electrical inspectors directory the state of MN has published. My inspector at the time was James Noonan. I first contacted him to confirm my understanding of the work and steps I was going to take. He was very helpful in letting me know how he expected the work to be completed. I then created my account and submitted the electrical permit.
Site Visit:
Site visit by Xcel foreman, the foreman visits the site to get measurements and pictures of the site. These measurements feed into the final contract numbers and in my case increased from the site sketch after we decided to continue all the way to the corner of the property.
The first foreman that visited actually denied or delayed or some status due to a retaining wall. The foreman noted the meter needed to be on the adjacent wall. The wall I was attempting to move the meter off. After discussion with the Xcel Design group and getting everything installed to show them the plan. They had another foreman out to approve and confirm measurements.
Approval / Contract / Payment:
So we’re three documents, multiple websites and phone calls, and two site visits into the project. We finally get approval! At this point it was getting stressful. I submitted my initial application on 9/25/2020. The terms say that anytime after 10/1/2020 the project could incur an additional $1,500 frost charge. That $1,500 fee would have doubled the total project expense.
Anyways, the Xcel designer sent me the contract and I processed it the same day, along with payment over the phone. The approval, contract, and payment all happened just about a month after the application on 10/22/2020.
Now the work Begins! - The project designer explained it will be broken up into a few final steps including the underground and overhead teams.
Underground Team:
An underground team is sent to the house. This team is responsible for burring the wire and stubbing up at each end. They had the heavy machinery and tools! They came in a large Xcel truck with a big trailer. The trailer had a boring machine, mini excavator, entire tri-plex wire role, and ditchwitch water pump.
The team first dug a large trench about 10’ diagonally from the corner of the house where the new service was to be stubbed up to a location they could park the boring machine. In the corner of the lot the Gopher One team had marked some internet/cable utility lines. The Xcel crewmember hand dug a massive hole in what seemed like no time! He was extremely careful to find and identify the cable.
They paced off the distance and pulled a big run of tri-plex wire off the truck, connected it up to the boring machine and started the long process of boring it ~120’ down to the corner of the lot. They stubbed up a good coil down at the base for the overhead team to run up the pole and make connections.
Typically they would also just stub up the wires at the meter location. Because we were also moving the meter location, our new meter location was not live in anyway so the crew ran the wires through the 2” schedule 80 PVC I had mounted and into the new meter enclosure.
Xcel Energy Minnesota - Underground Boring Crew 2020 Overhead to Underground Conversion
Overhead Team:
The overhead team was with MJ Electrical. They were linesmen who contract and work as Xcel Linemen when workload is high. This group had two guys, one basically on each end of the connection.
The linesmen in the lower corner had his work cut out for him, he had to mount the wire channel as he climbed the pole and make the connections to the secondary side lines on the pole. He then had to come up to the pole in the middle of the yard climb through a few trees to cut down the overhead wire to the house.
The linesmen on the house side had it a bit easier. First, I had my extension ladder already in position next to the meter. It is always a good idea to plan ahead for your contractors as much as possible. He had to land the wires in the panel, pull the meter from the old location, confirm my wiring inside wasn’t back fed in any way, and then set the meter. After the meter was powered back up and he had communicated with some calls to his counterpart it was powered back up! Maybe only a 20 minute outage.
During the process he did log a maintenance outage with Xcel and I received a few outage notification texts during the process.
Project Completion:
To complete the project I scheduled my final electrical inspection with the state assigned inspector (Jim), he came out the next day. Final inspection was a quick one after we already had the rough-in inspection before Xcel came out. He confirmed connections and that I made the recommended grounding changes.
Overall the project was a great success, the timeline was long and I’m glad we started the process well before the addition work! Had we waited this one step could have delayed construction almost two months!
9/24 - Application | 10/19 Rough-in Inspection | 10/22 - Contract 11/10 - Underground Team | 11/17 - Overhead Team | 11/18 - Final Inspection
*The main panel I used was a new combined socket and main Square D passthrough panel intended for solar or subpanels. This allowed me to meet the new 2020 NEC code for external disconnect.