What is a smart panel? Who should consider investing in one? Do they really help? Read on: We’re walking you through one of the most exciting home upgrades of the century.
What is a smart panel?
A smart panel is a digital electrical panel that can supplement or replace a traditional panel. It does everything a manual panel does, plus a load of upgrades that help you save energy and money.
Your electrical panel is the nerve center of your home’s electrical system. It connects to every circuit in your house and automatically trips or turns off a circuit if it’s overloaded.
Today’s smart panels combine this central function of the traditional panel with the ability to monitor energy use, turn circuits on and off remotely, run on programs that take advantage of lower electrical prices, and much more.
You can access a smart panel manually or monitor, review data, control, and program it through an app on your phone.
Who needs one?
If you have solar panels, you’ll have a smart meter that automatically tracks your energy use. A smart meter can connect to the smart panel in your home, which can be programmed to automatically default to solar power.
If you have a home with a low-capacity electrical system, you can also benefit from a smart panel, which can manage loads automatically, turning off appliances that aren’t in use. This can help you avoid a costly upgrade.
Of course, anyone can use a smart panel to monitor and control energy use at a granular level, all the way down to individual appliances. Cost- and energy-conscious consumers can use a smart panel to reduce the amount of energy they use (and their fossil fuel footprint).
What are the benefits?
Smart panels are part of the electrified future and are both simpler to operate and more technologically advanced than traditional panels. They have lots of benefits. We’ve tried to gather them all in one place for you.
Long-Term Savings
Smart panels are expensive to install. They cost between $3,000 and $5,000.
But they benefit you in the long run by helping you avoid the need to increase your home’s overall capacity, use more solar or other renewable energy, or manage the loads in your home (or all three)—all to help you lower your energy bills—for good.
Because a smart panel can take unused circuits completely offline when they’re not in use and run programs designed to conserve energy, it has the potential to lower your costs. That’s something a traditional panel can’t do.
Safety
A smart panel helps you keep yourself and your friends and loved ones safe by automatically shutting down and sending you an alert if it detects a surge, an arc fault, or an electrical overload.
This feature is designed to help stop a fire, prevent electrical damage, and save you and yours from harm.
Simplicity & Convenience
Electrical panels haven’t changed much since the middle of the last century, when circuits replaced fuses. Switching power back on after a circuit gets overloaded requires a trip to the basement or garage to manually flip the switch.
Traditional electrical panel circuits are labeled by hand and can be difficult to read. Sometimes they’re even inaccurately labeled.
A smart panel mitigates these factors. Controlled through an app on your phone, each region of the house is clearly labeled and switched back on with a touch—from anywhere.
Automatic monitoring
You aren’t using every device, appliance, or gadget in your home at the same time. So why should electricity flow to every one of them all the time?
This is especially true if you have an EV. Or a new induction oven that you only use in the evenings.
A smart panel continuously tracks the energy use of all of your major (and minor) appliances. This gives you a full picture, at a glance, of how much energy you’re using, when you’re using it, and where the power is going. This can help you identify vampire energy and the appliances that use the most electricity.
Energy savings through load management
The biggest benefit of the smart panel is the ability to manage your energy loads. According to This Old House, managing loads through a smart panel can keep you from having to install a generator panel to control energy use.
“Load management” means that a smart panel balances out your electricity demand by automatically turning off some circuits and turning others on. Overall, this helps lower your home’s demand—which translates to lower bills and a lower dependency on fossil fuels.
You can also manage energy loads yourself, by turning circuits on or off through the smart panel’s app.
Manage energy loads in a low-capacity house
If your home has low capacity—say, 100-amp utility service—a smart panel can help you avoid a utility service upgrade by turning off major appliances when you don’t need them. This can allow you to, for instance, fully electrify your home with less overall capacity.
A smart panel can do this for you automatically, adhering to limits you set so you never overload your system.
Manage energy loads in a solar-powered house
If you have solar panels, you can use a smart panel in conjunction with a solar backup battery and your smart meter to save energy.
Being able to use the solar power that your system has collected and stored—and less power from the grid—is the point of solar. By using a smart panel, you can ensure that your system is, indeed, using solar first.
During a power outage especially, it’s important to prioritize the energy from your system, to make sure it’s going to the right places. You might want to make sure it’s powering your chest freezer, for instance, instead of your dryer.
Programming also helps you prioritize solar by running on battery or generator power during peak hours to avoid the highest-cost electricity from the grid.
Manage power use during local outages
A smart panel’s tiered capability can also help you conserve battery energy during a local power outage by automatically shutting off non-critical electricity loads when it detects an outage.
And if you have backup power from a generator, solar system, or battery backup, your smart panel can tell you if you have extra power that you’re not currently using so you can bring other appliances or creature comforts back online.
Sources
All About Home Electrical Panels, NYSERDA (Accessed April 22, 2026)
Homeowner’s Guide to Smart Electrical Panels, Family Handyman, Chris Deziel, Updated September 30, 2024 (Accessed April 22, 2026)
How Smart Electrical Panels Manage Loads Possibly Avoiding the Need for Upgrades, Cool Davis, Eugen Dunlap, August 10, 2022 (Accessed April 22, 2026)
Smart Electrical Panel Guide: What Are They and How Do They Work?, palmetto.com, Andrew Giermak, edited October 31, 2025 (Accessed April 27, 2026)
Smart Panels: Manage your energy use more intelligently, qmerit.com, July 15, 2025 (Accessed April 27, 2026)
Understanding Smart Electrical Panels, This Old House, YouTube.com, April 5, 2022 (Accessed April 22, 2026)
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