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Miller Electrical

Parking Lot Lighting

Pole light installation, repair, and LED retrofits with our own bucket trucks, so the whole job stays with one contractor.

We own the bucket trucks, so we own the whole job

Parking lot lighting is really two problems: the electrical work, and getting a licensed electrician thirty feet in the air. Most electrical contractors handle the first and rent or subcontract the second, which is why a dark pole often takes weeks to sort out. Miller Electrical runs its own bucket trucks with our own crews, so diagnosis, repair, and installation happen on our schedule instead of a rental company's.

We install new poles and bases, replace fixtures and heads, retrofit older metal halide and high-pressure sodium lighting to LED, repair photocells, contactors, and time clocks, and locate and fix the underground feeds that fail between poles. When lights are out in a pattern rather than one at a time, the fault is usually in the circuit or the controls rather than in a fixture, and finding that correctly is where most of the money gets saved.

Miller Electrical bucket truck with the boom extended to a parking lot light pole, an electrician working at the fixture head

Who this is for

Property managers, business owners, retail and industrial sites, associations, churches, and municipalities with parking areas, drive lanes, and walkways to keep lit. A dark lot is a liability and a tenant complaint, and lighting is one of the few building systems where the repair and the efficiency upgrade are usually the same project.

We work on lighting we did not install, which is most of it. If you inherited a site with no drawings, mismatched fixtures, and a lighting panel nobody has labeled since the 1990s, that is a completely normal starting point for us.

What's included

Fixtures, poles, controls, and the underground between them, all under one contract.

Pole light installation

New poles, bases, and fixtures for new lots and expansions, placed so coverage is even instead of patchy and dark between poles.

Repair and troubleshooting

Dark or cycling lights traced to the actual cause: fixture, driver, photocell, contactor, time clock, breaker, or a faulted underground run.

LED retrofits

Metal halide and high-pressure sodium fixtures converted to LED, which cuts energy and maintenance and usually improves how the lot actually looks at night.

Lighting controls

Photocells, contactors, time clocks, and lighting panels replaced or reconfigured so the lot turns on and off when it is supposed to.

Underground feeds

Faulted circuits located and repaired, and new feeds trenched or directionally bored to added poles by our own crews.

Bucket truck access

In-house aerial equipment operated by our own licensed electricians, so scheduling never waits on a rental plus a subcontractor.

Why this is a Miller specialty

Most contractors can change a fixture. Far fewer can get to it, find the fault, and fix the underground feeding it.

  • Our own bucket trucks and our own licensed electricians, not a rented lift and a sub.
  • We locate and repair faulted underground circuits in-house, which is where most site lighting failures actually live.
  • Repair and LED retrofit get quoted together, so you can see whether fixing or upgrading is the better spend.
  • One contractor for the lighting, the controls, the underground, and the panel feeding all of it.

FAQ

Parking Lot Lighting questions

Still have a question? Call us at (651) 538-4500 and we'll walk you through it.

Usually not. When lights fail in groups or along one leg of a lot, the cause is normally upstream: a contactor, a photocell, a time clock, a breaker, or a faulted underground run. Individual failures scattered randomly around a lot point at fixtures or drivers instead. We start by determining which situation you have, because replacing fixtures on a circuit fault just gets you dark lights again.

A single fixture or photocell replacement is a modest and fairly predictable job. Locating a fault in an underground run, replacing a pole, or retrofitting an entire lot to LED are different orders of magnitude. We assess the site, tell you what is actually wrong, and price the repair against the retrofit so you can decide with both numbers in hand.

For most sites still running metal halide or high-pressure sodium, yes, on two counts. Energy use typically drops substantially, and maintenance drops further because you stop replacing lamps and ballasts from a lift every couple of years. Utility rebate programs are often available for commercial lighting retrofits, and we will tell you what your site may qualify for rather than promising a number we cannot control.

Yes. Bucket trucks and aerial access are in-house, staffed by our own licensed electricians. That is the reason we can usually schedule pole work quickly, and it is why we are often the ones called in after another contractor has spent a month waiting on a lift.

Yes. We trench or directionally bore the new feed with our own crews, set the bases and poles, and tie it into the site's lighting panel and controls. Doing the underground and the lighting with one contractor removes the coordination gap where these projects usually stall.

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  • Serving the Twin Cities metro since 1978

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