[Kirby64]

All houses in this neighborhood use natural gas for heating and stove/oven heating, so they have minimal heating load in the winter in terms of actual electrical consumption, and you get rid of the 50A oven outlet.

In general, electric heat is a bit of a menace in terms of electrical consumption... especially given electric prices lately.

[tharkun__]

Which is exactly my point. For your reality the reasons you gave make sense for why 100A may have been standard even in 2008. It does not generalize well to an entire continent or two though.

I live way too far out to have natural gas service and because I have such a small house it has baseboard heating. Most larger houses here have electric furnaces instead. But having 200A service meant I was easily able to add a mini split heat pump taking care of heating most of the time but we have no space to put a furnace instead. We do have propane to heat when power is out (or just if I want the nicety of a roaring fire heating up the room on -40 evenings). The oven is electric too. I was looking at getting a tankless water heater but would need to upgrade the electric service for that apparently because my 200A are not enough in case "everything else is on at the same time" (I personally wouldn't mind the heaters shutting off for 3 minutes while I take a shower but I guess that's against code).

Also electricity prices do not generalize well. Way too much variance across an entire continent or two. What you say is expensive for you actually isn't that expensive here. Now ask someone in Europe this winter what they think about your electricity prices in comparison.