Commercial LED retrofit, Edmonton and central Alberta
Most lighting retrofits around here are sold by people who have never pulled a permit. Mine are not.
I am an electrician who does lighting, not a lighting salesman who found an electrician. Dmitry Naboka, Master Electrician #13824, 14 years in the trade.
Four kinds of lighting live in one building. Tap what you have.
Tap a part of the building. I will tell you what that job actually involves, then take you to the part of this page that goes deep on it.
Troffers and flat panels
The flat panel in an office ceiling looks like the easy half. Six things are going on inside that fixture and only one of them shows up on your power bill. The other five are why a cheap one gets replaced twice.
See the six things inside a fixtureHigh bay and shop lighting
A tube throws light in a circle. Your shop floor is a rectangle. High bay is a different job from an office ceiling, and cold performance matters here, which is the part nobody mentions in Edmonton.
Put your own building inOutdoor lighting
Parking lot poles, wall packs and canopies are their own job. Different mounting, different aiming, and a lot more weather than anything you hang indoors.
See all four kinds of lighting workSensors and controls
Occupancy and daylight sensors are where a lot of the real savings sit, because a fixture that is off draws nothing. Fewer fixtures is not automatically less power. Controls usually are.
See the four ways to do the same jobThe electrical room, and the 347 volt trap
If your building runs 347 volt, the cheap tube swap stops being cheap. Field modifying a certified fixture voids its certification, and that is a published rule, not my opinion. Your old ballasts may also be hazardous waste, and legally they are yours.
Read the 347 volt trapPermit and levy
The permit and the levy are two different published costs, and both go on your quote instead of showing up later. There is also no LED rebate in Alberta right now. I would rather tell you that at the start.
See the permit and the levyTap a numbered pin, or use the arrow keys.
Real jobs, shot on the day
Swipe. Seven jobs, all Alberta, all my crew.
That means all four of these, on every job.
I meter first
I meter your fixtures before I quote them
I pull the permit
I pull the permit
I price the label
I price the certification label
I say so
and I tell you when the cheap version is the wrong version
Start here
Tell me what kind of building it is and I will show you the version that applies to you
Everything below is on this one page. These jump you straight to the part written for your building, with the fixture counts and the price bands for that kind of job.
Any commercial building, the whole offer
Offices, libraries, municipal buildings, shops and warehouses. The walkthrough, the three ways to do it, planning ranges, and the calculator in one place.
Warehouse or high bay
Ceilings over 20 feet, racking aisles, and the 347 volt question that decides your whole budget.
Shop or manufacturing
A 104 fixture Edmonton shop goes 20.0 kW to 5.2 kW. Example building, both options priced at my numbers.
Showroom or dealership
Where colour rendering actually costs you a sale. An example showroom, 94 fixtures.
Office or tenant space
Troffers and flat panels, glare and flicker, and doing it in zones so nobody loses a workday.
Parking lot or outdoor
Poles, wall packs and canopies. Full cutoff optics run about 19 percent more and three of my markets require them.
Not sure yet, run the numbers
Put your fixture count and your power rate in and see the band, right here on this page.
Or read it straight through
- The four kinds of lighting work, and why they price differently
- The four ways to do this job, and what each one costs
- The six things inside the fixture, and the one everybody quotes
- Six things that cost real money and are missing from most quotes
- Example buildings, real fixture counts, real prices
- Price bands, and the permit fees published by the city
- The six steps, so you know what day you are on
- The eight questions I get on every walkdown
- The long version, with all the tables
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What customers say about the work
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The calculator
Put your own building in and see the range
It uses published wattage tables for what is up there now and real prices off jobs I have already invoiced. It gives you a range instead of one number, because until I meter a fixture I do not know where inside the wattage band yours sits.
Want it on its own page to send to your partner or your accountant? Run the calculator. Every result has a shareable link.
What I actually do
Four kinds of lighting work, and they are not the same job
Indoor troffers and flat panels
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.
High bay and shop lighting
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.
Warehouse lighting mounting height guidanceOutdoor, poles, wall packs and canopies
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.
Guide to the CE Code Section 30Strathcona County Land Use Bylaw s.3.10Controls and sensors
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.
PNNL-21923 lighting control field studyThe reason I split these out is that most quotes do not. A single line that says "supply and install LED lighting" is how a shop ends up with high bays hung at 14 ft and dark aisles between them.
Dmitry Naboka, Master Electrician #13824, 14 years in the tradeThe conversion paths
Four ways to do the same job. The cheapest one is not the one I recommend, and here is why in a table.
| Path | What happens | A fixture | What fails next |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type A Tube on the existing ballast | New LED tube, old ballast stays and keeps drawing. Fastest, least disruption. | $105 to $135 | The ballast. It is the part that was already going to fail and you paid to keep it. Saves the least. |
| Type B Tube, ballast removed | Ballast comes out, sockets rewired, fixture relabelled per CSA C22.2 No. 250.1. | $179 to $215 | Nothing left in there to fail. Restricted at 347 V by STANDATA 24-ECB-030. Usually the right answer on 120 V and 277 V. |
| Type C Tube on an external driver | Remote driver feeding the lamps. Rare on a retrofit here because it is the most labour for the least gain over Type B. | Quoted per job | The driver, and it is now a part nobody stocks. I rarely recommend it. |
| New fixture One for one | Whole fixture out, new LED panel in. Best light quality and the biggest cut in draw. | $241 to $275 | Nothing for the warranty term. Costs the most and the old fixtures go in the bin. What I recommend on 347 V. |
I put all four on one page, $11,443 to $26,242, with the load and the payback beside each. The middle option is usually the right answer. Showing all four is not indecision, it is the only way you can tell whether the cheap number is actually cheap.
Read the whole quote, four options with the load beside each
Dmitry Naboka, Master Electrician #13824, 14 years in the tradeWhat LED actually changes
Six things going on inside that fixture, and only one of them is on your bill
Where the watts go now
- 4 tubesabout 4 x 24 W
- Ballast loss and heatthe rest of the 110 to 132 W
- Light that dies inside the fixturea tube throws 360 degrees
Where they go after
- LED boards50 to 60 W a fixture
- No ballaston the Type B and new fixture paths
- Light aimed downfewer watts, more light on the floor
A tube throws light in a circle. Your floor is not a circle.
A tube emits all the way around. An LED points down. Same idea, drawn:
That is why a lower wattage fixture can put more usable light on the ground, and why comparing tube lumens to tube lumens is the wrong comparison. Delivered light is what matters.
A ballast is a part with a life span, and it is short
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.
USDA Forest Service fluorescent retrofit studyFluorescent does not fail, it fades, and you never notice
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.
Cold is the one nobody mentions in Edmonton
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.
Lighting Research Center 2x4 thermal studyFlicker, hum, and instant on
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.
Colour temperature and CRI, pick it once and pick it right
Pick the colour once and pick it right. This is the strip, warm on the left, cool on the right.
5000 K where you want contrast and alertness. 4000 K anywhere people sit and work.
Showrooms are a different spec sheet
A showroom or dealership wants high CRI so the paint reads true, which is a colour rendering spec, not a colour temperature one. For contrast, HPS sits around CRI 20 to 24. That is why everything in an HPS lot looks orange.
Controls are the seventh thing, and they are where the extra savings hide. Sensor compatibility depends on which tube you install, so I check it against the product data before I order.LEDVANCE SubstiTUBE sensor compatibilityPNNL-21923 lighting control field study
What the low bid leaves out
Six things that are true, cost real money, and are missing from almost every lighting quote in this city
This is the section that costs me jobs and wins me customers. I would rather you read it here than find out about it after somebody else has already invoiced you.
There is no LED rebate in Alberta right now
Energy Efficiency Alberta, wound up 2020
ERA Energy Savings for Business, closed and fully allocated
SEMI, industrial only
The write off is real, though
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.
CRA capital cost allowance classesThe 347 volt trap, and why the cheap swap stops being cheap
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.
Alberta STANDATA 24-ECB-030Field modifying a certified fixture voids its certification
Field modifying a certified luminaire voids its certification. This is the line between the two.
Per CSA C22.2 No. 250.1, with the kit certified for the fixture per STANDATA 24-ECB-002. Most low bids do not price the label.
Your old ballasts might be hazardous waste and they are legally yours
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.
Environment and Climate Change Canada, PCB rules for electrical contractorsAlberta PCB checklistAevitas Edmonton, EPEA approval 134-05-00Edmonton Eco Station accepted items and feesFewer fixtures is not automatically less power
Here is the arithmetic nobody publishes.
What happens under 18 ft
Bright pools under each fixture and dark aisles between them. If your building does not fit, I will tell you in writing before I sell you anything.
Proof
Example buildings, real fixture counts, real prices, real towns
Two example buildings, drawn at the fixture count I quote
104 fixtures, an example Edmonton shop
94 fixtures, an example dealership showroom
Every square is one fixture. Example buildings at the counts and prices I actually quote, not round numbers.
A hotel hallway in Edmonton, before and after
I meter the light level before I touch anything, on every single job. That before number is the whole proof and it is the one thing a lighting salesman cannot produce after the fact.
Work I have already done
Dmitry Naboka, Master Electrician #13824, 14 years in the trade. Co owner Kyle V., Journeyman. Five person crew, no subcontractors. Raydn Renewables has been trading since August 2025.
Who is actually on your roof and in your ceilingWhat it costs
Price bands, then a site visit. Not a number pulled out of the air.
Every band low is set so the job still clears a 30 percent gross margin. That is not me being greedy, it is me not underbidding your job and then finding the money back in change orders.
| Path | A fixture | 104 fixtures | Typical payback |
|---|---|---|---|
| LED tube on the existing ballast | $105 to $135 | $10,920 to $14,040 | 1.0 to 1.8 years |
| LED tube, ballast removed | $179 to $215 | $18,616 to $22,360 | 1.5 to 2.5 years |
| New LED fixture, one for one | $241 to $275 | $25,064 to $28,600 | 1.8 to 3.1 years |
| Fewer high bay fixtures, over 18 ft | $490 to $540 | $19,600 to $21,600 on 40 fixtures | 1.5 to 2.4 years |
The permit and the levy are separate, and they are published
A stand alone electrical permit in Edmonton is $160 on work up to $3,000, $230 from $3,001 to $10,000, and $405 from $10,001 to $50,000, plus a 4 percent Safety Codes Levy, on the schedule effective January 1, 2026. I put the real fee on the quote instead of a padded allowance.
City of Edmonton commercial electrical permitsEdmonton 2026 Planning and Development Fee Schedules, Appendix DFull cutoff optics cost about 19 percent more, and three of my markets require them
Strathcona County and St. Albert require full cutoff. Parkland County requires Dark Sky compliant product on anything that needs a permit. Spruce Grove can ask for a photometric plan. Edmonton requires none of it. I read your bylaw before I price the fixture, not after.
Strathcona County Land Use Bylaw s.3.10St. Albert Land Use Bylaw 18/2024 s.3.24Parkland County Land Use Bylaw, consolidatedSpruce Grove Land Use Bylaw C-824-12 Part 6 s.37Edmonton Zoning Bylaw 20001 s.5.120347 V capable exterior product runs about 22 percent more
And most Alberta commercial exterior is 347 V. If a quote does not name the voltage, it has not priced the right fixture yet.
Outdoor jobs do not get a price on a web page from me
Pole condition, buried feeder condition, lift access and the photometric layout change the number too much. What I will publish is the energy and the maintenance you stop paying. The install number comes off a site visit.
How the job runs
Six steps, and you know what day you are on
The walkdown, free
I count fixtures, meter a sample fixture, read the nameplate on the ballast, take a lux reading, check the ceiling height with a tape, confirm the supply voltage, and photograph any pre 1980 ballast labels. Usually an hour on a 100 fixture building.
The written scope, with all the options priced
Every path you qualify for, priced side by side, with the load and the payback on each. Not one number and a signature line.
Permit
Pulled under my Master Electrician number, #13824. Fee shown at cost with the levy separate.
City of Edmonton commercial electrical permitsInstall, zone by zone
A 100 fixture indoor retrofit is normally two to four days with the five person crew, worked around your operation. Old tubes boxed as we go, ballast labels photographed and counted.
Disposal, manifested
Tubes to the Eco Station on the commercial fee schedule. Any PCB ballast manifested as Class 9 UN2315 and routed through Aevitas in Edmonton, EPEA approval 134-05-00.
Aevitas Edmonton, EPEA approval 134-05-00Environment and Climate Change Canada, PCB rules for electrical contractorsTurnover and inspection
Inspection closed out, then a package: fixture schedule with counts and wattages, the after lux readings beside the before, warranty terms, the certification labels used, and the Certificate of Recycling. On paper, so it survives the next building manager.
Straight answers
The eight questions I get on every single walkdown
What does a commercial LED retrofit cost in Edmonton?
On a four lamp fluorescent troffer, how far you go sets the price, and high bays are their own tier.
To put an LED tube on the existing ballast
roughly $105 to $135 a fixture installed
To remove the ballast
$179 to $215
For a whole new fixture
$241 to $275
High bays
run $490 to $540
Those are bands, not quotes, and every one of them is priced at a minimum 30 percent gross margin so I am not underbidding the job and then chasing extras. The band becomes a number after I walk the building.
Is there an LED rebate or grant in Alberta?
No. Energy Efficiency Alberta wound up in 2020, the Emissions Reduction Alberta Energy Savings for Business program is fully allocated, and SEMI is industrial only. What is real is the capital cost allowance, Class 8 at 20 percent declining balance, which your accountant claims. Any payback calculation you have been shown with a rebate line in it is fiction.
Do I need an electrical permit to convert fluorescent or HID to LED?
Needs a permit
Yes
Changing the fixture or the way it is wired is an improvement to the installation, not maintenance.
Does not
No
Swapping a lamp for the same lamp is maintenance.
In Edmonton a stand alone electrical permit is, on the 2026 schedule:
Up to $3,000 of work
$160
And from $10,001 to $50,000
$405
Plus a Safety Codes Levy
of 4 percent
My shop is 347 V. Can you still do a tube retrofit?
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.
Will fewer, brighter high bays save me more than one for one panels?
Not always, and this is the arithmetic that gets skipped.
40 high bays at 150 W is
6.0
kW
The high bay job draws more.
104 flat panels at 50 W is
5.2
kW
It also needs about 18 to 20 ft of open ceiling or you get bright pools and dark aisles. If your building does not fit, I say so before I quote it.
What happens to my old tubes and ballasts?
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.
How long does the job take and do I have to shut down?
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.
Who actually does the work?
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.
Next step
Book the walkdown
Free. About an hour.You get a written scope with the option prices side by side.
What I measure while I am there
- 1
I will count your fixtures
- 2
I meter one
- 3
I read your municipal lighting bylaw
- 4
I hand you the options priced side by side
Free, and it takes about an hour on a hundred fixture building.
Booked. I have your number.
I will call you within 24 hours to set the time. If you want it sooner, call or text me at (780) 904-3462.
I do the walkdown myself. I meter a fixture, count what is actually up there, read your municipal lighting bylaw before I show up, and hand you a written scope with the option prices side by side. No pressure, and no rebate that does not exist.
Dmitry Naboka, Master Electrician #13824, 14 years in the trade