York County, Maine
Licensed, insured electrical work for Alfred homes and businesses, with the owner on every job.
Alfred has been York County's shire town since 1806, and its village of old houses and county buildings still lines the roads to Kennebunk and Saco. Around it lie Alfred Mills, North Alfred, the old Shaker settlement and miles of woods and ponds, home to about 3,100 people. Goodnow Electric, a Maine master electrician from Westbrook, works in Alfred on panels and services, EV chargers, standby generators, rewiring and lighting, and takes emergency calls day or night. The owner comes to each job personally.
Alfred's roughly 1,400 homes cover a wide span. Census estimates show about 19 percent built before 1940, mostly in the village and the older farmsteads, but only a small share from the 1940s and 1950s. Construction picked up after that: roughly a quarter of the houses went up in the 1960s and 1970s, another quarter in the 1980s and 1990s, and about 29 percent from 2000 on. The median year built is 1983. Mobile homes make up about 12 percent of the stock, and buildings with two to four units another 12 percent, both high shares for a small town. Each type brings its own electrical questions: fuse panels and early wiring in the old houses, service and grounding rules for mobile homes, and shared meters in small multi-family buildings.
Oil still heats about 65 percent of Alfred's occupied homes in Census figures, and wood nearly 15 percent, more than in Sanford, North Berwick, Lyman or Dayton. Propane covers about 13 percent and electricity about 6, while utility gas sits near 1 percent. With so many oil boilers still in service, heat pumps are the most likely big new load in an Alfred house, and they often arrive together with a panel that needs more room. The other load on the rise is home EV charging, where Efficiency Maine takes $400 off a qualifying off-peak charger.
Alfred is a wooded town, and on its long rural roads most outages begin with a falling tree. In October 2017 a windstorm left more than 400,000 Maine customers in the dark, some for over a week, which made it the state's largest weather outage up to then; the December 2023 storm brought roughly 300,000 more across Maine. Fire has shaped this landscape too: the Great Fires of 1947 burned 4,500 acres in Alfred. A house with its own well has no water once the pump stops, and the oil burner, sump pump and freezer quit with it, so backup power is a practical question here.
Forty-eight houses along the Kennebunk and Saco roads form the Alfred Historic District, listed on the National Register. So is the Alfred Shaker Historic District on Shaker Hill Road, where Shakers settled in 1783 near what is now Shaker Pond. The 1872 District No. 5 School on Gore Road and the Senator John Holmes House on Route 202 are listed too. The York County Courthouse on Kennebunk Road and the county jail are both in Alfred. The Middle Branch of the Mousam River and the Littlefield River drain the town, with ponds and wetlands between the villages.
Alfred's Codes Office moved to an online permit portal that handles building, plumbing and mechanical permits, and it lists generators under mechanical permits. Tree removal in the Shoreland District also needs a town permit, and the office coordinates floodplain matters. The office posts no electrical permit form of its own. According to Maine's Electricians' Examining Board, a state electrical permit is always required in state-governed areas for commercial buildings, for dwellings of two or more units and for any building with two or more meters. Goodnow Electric takes care of whichever permits apply to the job.
Commercial, solar, smart home and new construction work are covered on our full list of electrical services.
Homeowners here often read why Southern Maine homes outgrow 100-amp panels, a Maine homeowner's guide to EV charger installation, and what smart home wiring is worth doing in Maine.
More resources: answers to common electrical questions, our generator sizing guide, and electrical tips and guides for Maine homeowners.
“Amazing guys, fixed the wiring on an old house. The process was very smooth, rarely do I run into a business operation that is this knowledgable helpful and honest. That's why these guys deserve all the praise, they worked very hard.”
Nick Injac • September 2026 • Google Review
Tell us what you need done and where; a licensed electrician will reply with a written quote.
