Parent-electric

Parent Electric is a Melrose electrician outfit run by Darel J. Parent, who the company's own site says founded it in 2012 and still does the work himself — reviewers address him by first name far more often than the business name. The recurring call is for exactly the jobs a homeowner dreads doing alone: swapping a breaker panel, chasing a mystery outage, or ripping out decades-old wiring. The most striking recent job: a homeowner whose house had just burned down needed all four floors rewired from scratch and called Darel "blind," with nothing to go on. They came away planning to use him for "literally all" future electrical work. Around the same week, another customer had him relocate an exterior breaker panel and upgrade every interior outlet — work he then followed up on personally with the city inspector to make sure it passed code. Both fit the pattern across 36 reviews on Google and Angi stretching back to 2023: a fast callback, a job finished in one visit, and an explanation of what he found in wiring that's often older than the panel he's replacing. Two things are worth checking before booking. Angi lists a Massachusetts electrician license number (#50702) for the business, but that number is self-reported on the listing — nothing alongside it confirms the license against the state board, so it's worth asking to see it directly. Separately, a Boston permit-tracking site shows permits filed under Darel Parent's name in that city since 2018, with one of three still open years later and a 0% closure rate among the permits old enough to rate. It's a small sample and tied to Boston specifically rather than his home base of Melrose, but worth raising if a job needs a permit pulled. Parent Electric reads like the right call for someone who wants one person, not a dispatcher, showing up to diagnose an electrical problem quickly and explain it plainly — panel swaps and rewiring are where the praise concentrates. Before hiring for anything permit-heavy, ask to see the current license and confirm how permit closeout will be handled on this specific job.