NEC 2026 Dwelling Load Calculations: What Changed From 2023, With One House Run Both Ways

Every three years the National Electrical Code is revised, and every revision reaches the dwelling load calculation eventually. The 2026 edition reached it directly. If you are a homeowner, this is why your electrician's numbers may look different from the ones in a three-year-old quote. If you are the electrician, this is the list of what to check before you file under the new book.

Every figure below was produced by the same load engine that runs our calculators, on one house, under both editions. Nothing here is estimated by hand.

The house

A 2,050 ft² all-electric home: a 10 kW range, a 5,000 VA dryer, a 4,500 VA water heater, a dishwasher and disposal, a 3-ton heat pump with 7.5 kW of supplemental strip heat, and a 32 A Level 2 EV charger. Two small-appliance circuits and one laundry circuit, 120/240 V service.

The standard method went down by 11.0 A and the optional method went up by 10.8 A. On this particular house neither change moves the minimum service rating, but on a house closer to a boundary either one can, in either direction. That is the first thing to know: NEC 2026 is not simply "more lenient" or "more strict".

The renumbering

Article 220 is now Article 120. Every clause keeps its last digits, so 220.41 becomes 120.41, 220.82 becomes 120.82, Table 220.55 becomes Table 120.55. The engine renumbers automatically based on the edition of the calculation, and every page of the printed report says which edition it was calculated under. A plan reviewer working from the 2026 book will look for 120.x citations; one working from 2023 will look for 220.x. Filing the wrong numbering is an avoidable rejection.

Change 1: general lighting drops to 2 VA per square foot

The largest single change for most houses. NEC 2023's 220.41 counted 3 VA per square foot of floor area for general lighting and receptacles; 120.41 counts 2 VA. On this house that is 6,150 VA under 2023 and 4,100 VA under 2026 before the Table 120.45 demand factors are applied.

For homeowners: this reflects LED lighting and the fact that the old figure dated from incandescent bulbs. It lowers the calculated load of every house a little, and of large houses more.

For electricians: the lighting figure feeds the general-load subtotal that Table 120.45 reduces at 35% above the first 3,000 VA, so the effect on the total is about 0.65 × 1 VA × floor area. It also feeds the number of general lighting circuits the panel schedule derives, so the schedule for the same house under 2026 has fewer 15 A circuits.

Change 2: the 125% continuous-load adder is gone from the calculation

Under NEC 2023, 230.42(A)(1) required the service conductors to be sized for 125% of the continuous load, and the calculation carried that as a separate row. EV charging is a continuous load, so a 7,680 VA charger added 1,920 VA to the service calculation on top of its own line. NEC 2026's 120.5(E) says the 125% factor is not applied in load calculations at all.

For homeowners: the charger still needs its own oversized branch circuit; that rule (625.41) did not change. What changed is that the whole-house number no longer carries the margin twice.

For electricians: this is the line that makes the standard method fall on any house with EVSE. It is also easy to forget when checking a 2026 calculation against an old spreadsheet.

Change 3: EV chargers count at nameplate

220.57 in 2023 counted each charger at the larger of 7,200 VA or its nameplate, so a 16 A charger counted as 7,200 VA. 120.57 counts nameplate whenever it is available, using 7,200 VA only as a fallback: the same 16 A charger is 3,840 VA. Our 32 A example is above the floor either way, so it counts the same under both editions; small chargers are where the difference shows.

Change 4: the optional method's tiers and EVSE treatment

This is the change that pushes the optional method up on this house. Two things happened in 120.82:

• The general-load tier boundary moved from 10,000 VA to 8,000 VA. The first 8,000 VA counts at 100% and the remainder at 40%, so 2,000 VA that used to count fully now still counts fully but 2,000 VA more of everything else is above the line.
• EV charging left the general load. Under 2023's 220.82(B)(3)a the charger sat inside the general load, where most of it fell in the 40% tier and counted for 7,680 VA × 40%. Under 120.82(D) it is a separate line at 100% of the 120.57 value: 7,680 VA in full.

The optional method also now counts an attached garage in the lighting load (120.5(C)), where 2023's 220.82(B)(1) excluded it. This house has no attached garage, so that change does not appear in the table.

What did not change

Table 120.45's lighting demand factors, 120.53 for appliances fastened in place, Table 120.54 for dryers, Table 120.55 and its notes for cooking, 120.60 for noncoincident heating and cooling, the 430.24 largest-motor adder and the 120.61 neutral calculation carry the 2023 values. The existing-dwelling method (120.83) changed structurally, from two paths to one set of tiers with EVSE at 80%; that is its own topic and our EV charger answer shows the numbers.

Line by line

Which edition applies to you

Whichever one your jurisdiction has adopted. Adoption runs one to two cycles behind publication in many states, sometimes with amendments to specific sections, and a permit filed under the wrong edition is rejected regardless of which way the numbers moved. Ask the building department, or check the front page of the last permit you pulled.

The Pro load calculator carries an edition on every calculation, defaults to the one set in your account, and prints "Calculated per NEC 2023" or "Calculated per NEC 2026" on every page of the report. Both editions were verified against their code text and Annex D examples; the methodology page lists every clause with its verification status.

For a worked comparison with a different house and both methods' full line items, see what changed between NEC 2023 and 2026. For the code text itself, the NEC 2026 handbook is the reference we worked from.