LED lighting retrofits for Edmonton buildings, permit pulled and inspected.

Offices, hallways, retail, showrooms. 2x4 and 2x2 grid fixtures. This is where the tube versus ballast versus new fixture decision lives, and where the 347 V question decides it.

Warehouses, fabrication shops, machine shops, garages. Linear high bay in the 165 W class. Needs 18 to 20 ft of open ceiling to lay out on a wider spacing, and I check that with a tape before I price it.

Parking lots, yards, loading docks, signage. HID to LED. Pole work is bonding work, CEC Rule 30-1024(1), and three of the municipalities I work in mandate full cutoff optics that cost more.

Occupancy sensors in low traffic aisles, daylight harvesting near skylights, zone switching. Field measured savings run up to 76 percent in a parkade and about 37 percent on a retail lot, and those apply to the load that is left after the retrofit, never on top of it.

A tube emits all the way around. An LED points down. Same idea, drawn:

It regulates current to the lamps. It runs warm, it hums as it ages, and it is the component that takes your fixture out of service. Call it 60,000 hours. On a shop running 3,650 hours a year, that is a maintenance call you are scheduling whether you plan it or not.

Output drops slowly over years so your eyes track it down with the room. LED is rated L70, which means 70 percent of the original output at the rated hour count, typically 50,000 hours. That is a published curve instead of a slow surprise.

Open fluorescent fixtures lose a large share of their output at low temperature. Loading docks, unheated shops, cold storage, parkades. LED does not do that, it actually runs slightly more efficiently cold. If your dock is dim in January, that is not the tubes wearing out.

The reason a retrofitted shop feels different rather than just cheaper. No warm up, no strobing under a spinning chuck, no buzz over a quiet office. This one does not show up on the power bill and it is the thing your people comment on.

Pick the colour once and pick it right. This is the strip, warm on the left, cool on the right.

Commercial lighting normally lands in capital cost allowance Class 8 at 20 percent declining balance, and Class 8 qualifies for the accelerated first year allowance through 2027. Talk to your accountant about that, not to me. I am an electrician.

Alberta STANDATA 24-ECB-030 says a luminaire with double ended lamps on a ballast rated over 150 volts to ground, disconnected and reconnected, counts as a new luminaire and needs disconnecting means.

It extends that to energy conservation retrofits. Most Alberta warehouses and commercial buildings are 347 volt. So the cheap ballast bypass lands inside that sentence. A new fixture with no double ended lamps does not.

Field modifying a certified luminaire voids its certification. This is the line between the two.

Magnetic ballasts made before 1980 are PCB waste, Class 9 UN2315, and the building owner is legally responsible for them. I count them, photograph the labels, manifest them, and route them through Aevitas in Edmonton under EPEA approval 134-05-00.

The Certificate of Recycling goes in your turnover package. Tubes are mercury, and the commercial Eco Station fee is $1.00 a tube. The Eco Station will not take PCB ballasts from a business at all.

Here is the arithmetic nobody publishes.

We do not deduct a rebate from your estimate without written approval. Eligibility depends on the current program, property and equipment. We check those separately before you commit. Ask your accountant about tax treatment.

Carefully, and sometimes not at all. Alberta STANDATA 24-ECB-030 treats a double ended lamp luminaire on a ballast over 150 V to ground that gets disconnected and reconnected as a new luminaire needing disconnecting means, and it says that applies to energy conservation retrofits. Most Alberta commercial buildings are 347 V. On those I usually recommend a new fixture, and I will show you why in writing.

Tubes are mercury and go to the Eco Station at a dollar each on the commercial fee schedule. Magnetic ballasts made before 1980 can contain PCBs, which makes them Class 9 dangerous goods under UN2315, and the building owner is legally responsible for them. I count them, photograph the labels, manifest them and route them through Aevitas in Edmonton under EPEA approval 134-05-00. The Certificate of Recycling goes in your turnover package.

A 100 fixture indoor retrofit is normally two to four days with a five person crew and we work around your operation, zone by zone. Outdoor pole work is weather and lift dependent. Nothing gets energized without a permit and an inspection.

My crew. Dmitry Naboka, Master Electrician #13824, 14 years in the trade. Co owner Kyle V. is a Journeyman. Five people, no subcontractors. The reason my name is on every job is that Raydn has only been trading since August 2025, so my reputation is the only thing I have to sell.