[quickthrowman]

> I think the straw that broke the camel's back was the city's demand that they relocate the electrical panels. This means that all the interior wiring in the house now has to run to the new panel location - a huge expense. I'm not sure why they couldn't just move only the meters to be more accessible to the power company & firefighters[1] and then run a longer service cable from there to the original panels. That would be much cheaper.

You’re correct, you don’t need to move the panels, but you do need to provide a emergency service disconnect on the exterior of the house. You could leave all the existing branch wiring in place, assuming it is up to code, and refeed the existing panels from the new service entrance location. The relevant code section in the NEC is 230.85, added in 2020.

A large portion of the cost is new panels with AFCI and GFCI breakers, they’re $50-100 each for a 15A 1p breaker, probably $1500-2500 for each panel.