Federal Pacific panel replacement in Tampa-St. Petersburg

Hyde Park bungalows and Seminole Heights cottages still hide Federal Pacific and Zinsco load centers that were ordinary when those streets were new. The insurance letter is usually written somewhere else. The work is governed by whichever city sits on the parcel and by whichever utility owns the meter.

Those two systems do not match. Inside Tampa city limits the permit is Construction Services through Accela. Unincorporated Hillsborough County is HillsGovHub, including a named ELE-Electrical power-release inspection before the utility restores the service. St. Petersburg is its own Construction Services and Permitting shop at One 4th Street North. Unincorporated Pinellas County is the Pinellas Access Portal. A helper with a van is not the person who can print any of those.

Lakeland and Sarasota are nearby on a map and not this packet. This page stays on Hillsborough and Pinellas.

What TECO and Duke actually wrote

TECO’s Standard Electrical Service Requirements are blunt about who may touch the company’s side. Connections to or disconnections from Tampa Electric equipment are TECO’s job. There is a published exception: a licensed electrician may optionally disconnect a residential or small-commercial single-phase overhead service of 300 amps or less if they schedule the reconnect first, leave TECO’s attachment point alone, do not cut TECO conductors, and take the meter out only after the service is dead. Three-phase stays with TECO so phase rotation is preserved. The tariff repeats the inspection gate: where a city or county electrical wiring permit is required, no service will be connected or altered until that inspector signs.

On the Pinellas side, Duke Energy Florida’s tariff does the talking. Section 5.02 puts the seal in Duke's hands. A company representative seals every meter, and no one else may break it. Section 3.03 puts the same inspection gate on Duke that TECO prints: no service until the inspector’s formal approval arrives.

Neither utility publishes a guaranteed outage window. Lightning Bay Electric's own estimate for the day of the swap is roughly four to eight hours without power. Treat that as contractor language.

Read the bill before the estimate. The City of St. Petersburg bills water and trash. City flood notices send power outages to Duke Energy. A contractor page that invents a municipal electric company for St. Pete is not the official rulebook.

Permits inside the cities and in the counties

Inside Tampa city limits, start at Construction Services. Accela Citizen Access is the online counter. Hillsborough County’s own permits page says building and subtrade work is HillsGovHub, not the city portal, and the county’s FAQ names the electrical power-release inspection you schedule on that record.

In St. Petersburg, Construction Services and Permitting sits at the Municipal Services Center. Online applications and ePlan review are the published path. The city’s July 2026 HB 803 cheap-job exemption does not cover electrical work. Unincorporated Pinellas County tells you to confirm the address is actually in the county. Belleair Beach and St. Pete are not the Pinellas portal.

A 100A-to-200A upgrade is a utility coordination job as well as a city or county permit.

Price, without inventing one

Lightning Bay Electric, a Tampa shop on North 78th Street, prints two installed figures. A 200-amp replacement where the meter base and service entrance are in good shape runs $2,500 to $5,000, with panel, breakers, grounding, surge device, permit, and inspection included. When the meter base, riser, and service-entrance cable also have to be replaced, it is $4,000 to $7,500. Lightning Bay says the condition of what it finds drives the price. We use Lightning Bay for prices only here.

Florida license lookup is public. Ask for the EC (certified, statewide) or ER (registered, local) number and check it on DBPR before you sign. Accurate Electric LLC advertises Zinsco and Federal Pacific work on its own site, prints EC13011008, and matched a Current/Active certified electrical record at Plant City. Their FPE page is a form and a phone number; we did not find a public shop mailbox there.

Directory-only shops and generic multi-city sites are omitted. Accurate is not affiliated with Panel Letter.

What to hand the carrier

The useful packet is the closed city or county electrical permit, the passed inspection (Hillsborough’s power-release is worth naming on the invoice), an invoice with the EC number on it, and photos if the letter asks. If your electrician produces a load calculation or a labeled panel schedule, send that too. We did not find a Florida carrier page that publishes a single national “sticker” form. Ask the agent what they will actually open.