Lots of things can go wrong with the electricity and electrical system in your home. It is a complicated system supplying power to your home’s appliances and outlets through panels, breakers, circuits and wires.

Tampering with it can be dangerous and potentially lethal, especially if it is not brand, spanking new or has not been updated regularly and recently. When something happens to it, many people are afraid to try to fix it themselves—and they should be, unless they know at least the basics about electricity and how to do electrical work.
Nevertheless, in some circumstances you can take some steps on your own, at least to start with. If you have a complete power failure, for example, your first step should be to check whether it is the result of a power company outage or downed lines caused by severe weather, in which cases the entire neighborhood is probably in the same situation and you will simply have to wait it out.
You can also control your electrical system through your control panel or fuse box. Check each one of your breakers to see that none of them has tripped; if it has, simply connect it again. But, if it doesn’t come back on, don’t keep reconnecting it; it’s trying to tell you that something is indeed wrong. If you have a fuse box, changing a fuse is also pretty simple, and again, if it keeps blowing, it’s a signal that something is amiss. If those steps don’t do the trick, that’s when you phone the electrician.
Installing a new light fixture is probably also something that you can do yourself. The main thing is to be sure and switch off the breaker supplying the electricity before starting work and carefully following directions.
Otherwise, play it safe and leave the problem-solving to a licensed electrician, like those at Albuquerque Plumbing Heating & Cooling.