Exterior Site Lighting
Parking Lot & Site Lighting in Phoenix
Poles, bases, feeders, photometrics and controls, self-performed from the trench up.
A site lighting package is a civil job with a luminaire on top. The trench, the bases and the anchor bolts set the schedule; the LED heads are rarely what holds you up. We carry the excavation, the concrete, the feeder, the poles and the controls under one contract across Phoenix and Maricopa County.
What actually sets the schedule
The sequence that costs money is always the same. The pole submittal has to come back approved before the bases are poured, because anchor bolt pattern, bolt projection, base diameter and conduit entry all come off the approved cut sheet. Pour to a generic detail first and the bolt circle does not match what ships.
- The base is a structural element, not a lighting accessory. Depth, diameter and reinforcement follow the soils report and the adopted building code, sealed by the structural engineer. Phoenix is on the 2024 IBC under Ordinance G-7397, effective 1 August 2025; unincorporated Maricopa County is still on the 2018 IBC, adopted 17 August 2022. Two sites four miles apart can carry different base designs for the same pole.
- Arizona 811 gets called at least three days before excavation. On a built-out lot that call is also how you find the irrigation main that never made the as-builts.
- Cover depth is set by what sits above the trench. NEC Table 300.5 puts every wiring method at 24 inches under streets, driveways and parking lots. PVC that would be legal at 18 inches in a landscape island goes to 24 the moment it crosses a drive aisle.
- Restoration is electrical scope. Saw cut, spoil haul-off, compaction, patch and re-striping belong in the bid. A number that does not name them will grow.
We self-perform the trench and the concrete, so the base pour is scheduled against our own excavation. Underground and heavy equipment covers that side.
Dark sky here is a shielding rule, not a lumen budget
Arizona has no statewide building code. A.R.S. Title 9, Chapter 7, Article 3 lets every city adopt codes by reference, and A.R.S. 11-861 lets the county do the same for unincorporated land. Outdoor lighting is usually zoning rather than building code, so two lots on the same street can answer to different rules.
In unincorporated Maricopa County the rule is Zoning Ordinance Chapter 11, Section 1112. Fully shielded means light is projected below a horizontal plane through the lowest light-emitting point of the fixture. Partially shielded is a cutoff classification, measured in lumens per 1,000 lamp lumens at 90 and 80 degrees. Article 1112.4.2 sets shielding and filtering by lamp type, and 1112.2.2 says the most restrictive rule governs where ordinances conflict.
Phoenix regulates through Zoning Ordinance Section 704. Lighting must be located, shielded or reduced in intensity so it does not shine or reflect onto adjacent residential property. Fixtures on an automatic shutoff that keeps them dark from 11 p.m. to sunrise are exempt from the shielding mandate, which makes the control scheme part of the zoning answer and not just an energy feature. Confirm the current subsection numbering with Phoenix Planning and Development before designing to it.
| Jurisdiction | Basis of the rule | Numbers in it |
|---|---|---|
| Phoenix | Zoning Ordinance 704 — shielding by lamp type | Full shielding over 150 W incandescent and for HPS, metal halide, fluorescent and quartz; 11 p.m. auto-shutoff exemption; no lumens-per-acre cap; no CCT cap |
| Unincorporated Maricopa County | Zoning Ordinance Ch. 11 Sec. 1112 — shielding and cutoff | Fully or partially shielded; partial equals 25 lumens per 1,000 lamp lumens at 90 degrees and 100 at 80 degrees; most restrictive rule governs |
| Scottsdale | Development Review Board approval for all exterior lighting | ESL overlay low-scale caps reported at 1 W LED, 10 W metal halide, 25 W halogen — confirm against ordinance text, not the guidelines summary |
| Fountain Hills | Zoning Ordinance Ch. 8, certified Dark Sky Community | 3,000 K maximum on new or replaced lighting |
| Tucson / Pima County, for contrast | 2012 Outdoor Lighting Code — a quantitative budget | 250,000 lumens per acre, commercial Option 2 in E3; 3,500 K cap; 3,000 lumens per unshielded luminaire; 11 p.m. curfew |
Tucson and Pima County run a lumens-per-acre budget and trigger a special inspection once a site passes 100,000 lumens per net acre or 75 percent of its allowance. Maricopa County asks a different question: not how much light, but whether each fixture is shielded and what lamp type it is. The photometric plan does not transfer between the two.
Review wants the fixture's shielding or cutoff classification on the cut sheet and a photometric plan showing footcandles at the property line — not a marketing page that says dark-sky friendly. Engineering covers the photometrics and the permit set.
Poles, grounding and enclosures that last
The parts of a pole that fail inspection are small and predictable.
- The handhole and the grounding terminal. NEC 410.30(B) requires a handhole of at least 2 by 4 inches with a raincover on poles supporting luminaires, and a grounding terminal accessible from it, with limited exceptions for short poles and hinged bases. An inspector will open it.
- A wire-type equipment grounding conductor. Phoenix, unincorporated Maricopa County and Glendale all amend NEC 250.118 so EMT alone is not an acceptable equipment grounding conductor. Site lighting is mostly PVC, which never counted anyway, but the amendment catches the stub-ups and the run back into the building.
- Enclosure type, not IP rating. NEMA 3R is rainproof and carries no windblown-dust requirement; Type 4 and 4X do. For a contactor cabinet living outdoors through a monsoon season, 3R is often the wrong default. NEC 110.28 and Table 110.28 govern the choice.
- Sunlight-resistant conductors. NEC 310.10(D) requires conductors exposed to direct sun to be listed or marked sunlight resistant, separately from any temperature correction.
- Expansion fittings on exposed PVC. NEC 352.44 requires them where calculated movement reaches a quarter inch in a straight run, and practice adds 30 degrees F to the high ambient on a sun-exposed run. In Phoenix an ordinary riser crosses that threshold easily.
We fuse in the pole base so one fixture fault drops one pole instead of the circuit.
Feeders, voltage drop and the energy code split
Long runs are the defining electrical problem on a site lighting job. A lot 900 feet across on 208Y/120 eats conductor; the same layout at 480Y/277 usually does not. The NEC's familiar 3 percent and 5 percent voltage-drop figures sit in informational notes and are not enforceable, so the real limits are what the driver tolerates at the end of the run and what the owner will pay in copper. Run the number at the last pole, not at the panel.
NEC Table 310.15(B)(1) corrects the Table 310.16 ampacities from a 30 degrees C basis: at 41 to 45 degrees C a 90 degrees C conductor keeps 87 percent of its rating, and at 46 to 50 degrees C it keeps 82 percent. ASHRAE's cooling design condition for Phoenix is about 110 degrees F dry bulb, which is the defensible input rather than a guess. Our voltage drop calculator runs the same math we use on a bid.
Controls split by jurisdiction again. Phoenix adopted the 2024 IECC on 1 August 2025 but deleted C405.12, C405.13 and C405.15 and amended C401.2.1 so C408 commissioning is optional. Those deletions do not touch the exterior lighting provisions, so verify the current amendment sheet for your submittal. Maricopa County's energy code is adopted as optional; Scottsdale runs the 2021 IECC plus the 2021 IGCC; Chandler and Glendale are on the 2024 IECC. We specify contactor control with an astronomic time clock and a photocell, zoned so one failed photocell cannot dark half a lot.
Permits, the utility and the public right-of-way
Phoenix permits run through SHAPE PHX, which took on commercial plan review and inspections on 27 April 2026, and electrical is a separate trade permit. The city's July 2026 turnaround report puts initial commercial review at an average of 30 days for major projects against a 45-day goal, 33 days for medium against 35, and 33 days for minor against a 25-day goal. Small projects are furthest behind target, which is the opposite of what most schedules assume.
There is a faster route on the site side. Phoenix self-certification lets a registered civil engineer or landscape architect certify a parking lot plan and produce a permit in one to five business days, against a 10 percent administration surcharge and random and field-initiated audits. Note the limit: electrical engineers act as peer reviewers there, not self-certifiers, so the electrical portion still goes the normal route. Re-inspections are $195 after the first free one.
If the lighting needs new service rather than a spare breaker, the utility owns your schedule. APS works from the Electric Service Requirements Manual, current edition May 2026, takes commercial applications at build.aps.com, and publishes no committed timeline for commercial new service. SRP works from its Electric Service Specifications, republished 30 April 2026, and stopped permitting customer-owned service after 6 July 2026. Both expect the customer to trench, lay conduit and pour the transformer pad, and only utility employees energize. Service and distribution is where that coordination lives.
On the right-of-way: the civil work outside your property line sits under our KA Dual Engineering license, ROC 312437. The electrical side of a right-of-way is a different classification. Under the Registrar of Contractors, street lighting of all voltages on public rights-of-way, pole erection for utility lines, and work at or above 600 volts fall under A-17 Electrical and Transmission Lines, which we do not hold. Private-site lighting under 600 volts is CR-11 work, ROC 276948, held by Arizona Electrical Solutions, LLC. The credentials page lists every number so you can check them at the ROC.
Where we are not the right bid
Cheaper to say now than after an award.
- Roadway or street lighting in the public right-of-way, on poles owned by a city or a utility. That is A-17 scope.
- Anything at or above 600 volts on the utility side of the point of delivery.
- Knock-down repairs on an on-call basis. We do scheduled permitted work; posted hours are Monday to Thursday 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM and Friday 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM.
- Landscape and accent lighting. This page is site and parking lot lighting to a photometric standard.
- New poles on existing bases with no structural review. If the calculation is not available at bid time we carry the replacement base as an alternate.
To price a package we want the site plan with pole locations, the photometric plan or the target footcandles, the fixture specification, the geotechnical report, the capacity at the serving panel, and the jurisdiction. Send it over and you will have trench and base numbers before anyone orders fixtures.
Frequently asked questions
Does Phoenix have a dark-sky ordinance for parking lot lighting?
Phoenix regulates outdoor lighting through Zoning Ordinance Section 704 rather than through a dark-sky code in the Tucson sense. It requires lighting to be located, shielded or reduced in intensity so it does not shine or reflect onto adjacent residential property, and it requires full shielding for high-pressure sodium, metal halide, fluorescent, quartz and incandescent sources over 150 watts, with an exemption for fixtures on an automatic shutoff that keeps them dark between 11 p.m. and sunrise. There is no lumens-per-acre budget and no color temperature cap in the Phoenix ordinance. Confirm the current subsection numbering with Phoenix Planning and Development before designing to it, because the ordinance is amended on its own schedule.
How deep does conduit have to be under a parking lot?
NEC Table 300.5 requires 24 inches of cover under streets, highways, roads, alleys, driveways and parking lots, and that 24 inches applies to every wiring method, PVC included. In open ground away from vehicle traffic PVC can sit at 18 inches. The practical consequence is that the trench crossing a drive aisle is deeper than the trench through a landscape island, and the crossings are where both the schedule and the restoration cost concentrate.
How long does a site lighting permit take in Phoenix?
Phoenix publishes its own turnaround times. The July 2026 report puts initial commercial plan review at an average of 30 days for major projects against a 45-day goal, 33 days for medium against a 35-day goal, and 33 days for minor projects against a 25-day goal, so small projects are currently running furthest behind target. Electrical is a separate trade permit and applications go through the SHAPE PHX portal, which took on commercial plan review and inspections on 27 April 2026. A registered civil engineer or landscape architect can self-certify the parking lot plan and produce a permit in one to five business days, but that program carries a 10 percent administration surcharge and audit exposure, and electrical engineers act as peer reviewers in it rather than as self-certifiers.
Can we reuse the existing pole bases?
Sometimes, and only when the structural engineer says the existing base and anchor bolts suit the new pole and fixture. A new LED head usually weighs less than the metal halide luminaire it replaces, but wind load is driven by the effective projected area of the fixture and the height of the pole, not by weight, and the base was designed to whatever code edition was in force when the lot was built. We will not set a new pole on an old base on the strength of a visual check. If the calculation is not available at bid time we carry the replacement base as an alternate.
Is my site served by APS or SRP, and does it change anything?
It changes a good deal. Arizona has no retail electric choice, so the serving utility is decided by location alone, and the two run different standards, different portals and different money rules. APS works from the Electric Service Requirements Manual, current edition May 2026, takes commercial applications through the APS Construction Project Portal at build.aps.com, and publishes no committed timeline for commercial new service. SRP works from its Electric Service Specifications, republished 30 April 2026, receives service entrance shop drawings by email, and stopped permitting customer-owned service after 6 July 2026. Municipal boundaries are not utility boundaries either, and downtown Mesa is served by the City of Mesa's own municipal electric utility, which catches people who assume the whole city is SRP.
Do you install street lighting in the public right-of-way?
The civil work in a right-of-way sits under our KA Dual Engineering license, ROC 312437, but the electrical side of it does not. Under the Arizona Registrar of Contractors classifications, street lighting of all voltages on public rights-of-way, pole and tower erection for utility lines, and work at or above 600 volts fall under the A-17 Electrical and Transmission Lines classification, and we do not hold A-17. Private-site parking lot and site lighting under 600 volts is CR-11 work, ROC 276948, held by Arizona Electrical Solutions, LLC, and that is what we bid. If your scope is genuinely roadway lighting in the right-of-way we will say so at the bid rather than after the award.
What color temperature should we specify in the Valley?
Neither the Phoenix zoning ordinance nor the Maricopa County zoning ordinance sets a correlated color temperature cap, so across most of the Valley the choice is a design and neighbor-relations decision rather than a code one. Some jurisdictions do cap it. Fountain Hills, a certified International Dark Sky Community, sets a 3,000 K maximum on new or replaced lighting, and Tucson and Pima County cap rated color temperature at 3,500 K. An owner with sites in both markets cannot copy one specification across, and Scottsdale adds its own layer because every exterior lighting design there goes through Development Review Board approval.
Get a price on this scope
Ready to price your Phoenix project?
Send us the plans, the scope, or just the problem. We will tell you what it takes. Call (602) 396-5216 or request a bid online.