01
Power Distribution
Service entrance, feeders, panelboards and the load calculation that decides all three. Low voltage through medium and high voltage, and the grounding underneath it.
Chapter 01
Where the building's power actually stops being simple.
Every building has a point where the utility's power becomes the owner's problem: the service entrance. From there it runs through switchgear, splits into feeders, and lands on panelboards that hand it off to the rest of the building. On paper that sounds like four separate pieces of equipment. In practice it is one system, and the load calculation is what decides how big each piece has to be and whether the piece before it can actually carry what's downstream.
Most distribution problems don't show up where they start. A panel that's been added onto more than once, or a feeder sized for a building that's since been renovated, tends to announce itself as nuisance tripping somewhere else in the building entirely. Reading the actual distribution system, not just the breaker that tripped, is what separates a real fix from a reset.
Two electricians reading a schematic at an open switchgear panel
Medium and high voltage is a different licence and a different day.
Low voltage work and medium or high voltage work are both capabilities here, and on site they are treated as two different jobs, not two names for the same task. The clearances change, the required PPE changes, and the switching order, what gets de-energized first, what stays hot, who is standing where, changes with it.
Not every electrician working a low voltage panel is the person who should be opening a piece of medium voltage switchgear, and that distinction gets kept on the job site, not just filed in an office somewhere. It is the difference between a licensed shop and a shop that only has a license on the wall.
Chapter 03
Grounding is the part nobody sees and everybody depends on.
Grounding is its own capability here, listed separately from the panels and the feeders, because it deserves to be. Bonding, ground rings, and the equipment grounding conductors that tie it all back to the source don't do anything visible day to day. They only matter the moment something goes wrong.
A protective device, a breaker, a fuse, a ground fault circuit, only works the way it's designed to if the grounding underneath it is actually correct. Get the ground wrong and the rest of the distribution system is guessing.
What we need from you before we quote.
A one-line description of the job gets a conversation started, but a real number needs more: existing panel schedules if you have them, the utility account for the building, and a sense of the access windows you're working with, whether that's a plant that never shuts down or a building that's empty on weekends.
Design build and estimating are both handled in house, which matters at this stage specifically. It means the shop pricing the job is the same shop that has to build to that price, so the number is built off what's actually buildable rather than a drawing nobody has to stand behind.
Lone Star Electric — Local and state licensed. Insured and bonded. Call 817-335-8044.