Services · Tucson, Arizona
Most Arizona RV parks were wired for a different era — 30-amp pedestals, modest feeders, and demand assumptions from before every rig carried two air conditioners. Arizona Electrical Solutions engineers and self-performs RV park electrical upgrades across Tucson and statewide: the load study, the service and feeder capacity, the distribution, the pedestals, and the trenching in between — phased so the park never has to close. Request a bid →
RV Park Electrical
A park built in the 1970s was designed around rigs that drew a fraction of what pulls into a space today. A modern fifth wheel or Class A runs two rooftop air conditioners, an electric water heater, a residential refrigerator, and a bank of chargers — and in a Tucson July, every one of those air conditioners is running at 4 p.m. at every occupied site at once. Voltage sags, breakers trip, pedestal receptacles overheat, and the front office fields the complaints.
The fix is rarely just new pedestals. Capacity has to exist upstream before it can exist at the space, which is why we scope these projects from the utility service down — the same service & distribution work we self-perform on commercial sites, applied to a park that stays open while we do it.
Replacing failed and undersized pedestals with modern 20/30/50-amp units, correcting the 30/50 mix for the rigs the park actually hosts, and setting them plumb, at grade, and to the clearances that pass inspection. NEC Article 551 governs the receptacle mix and the wiring behind it — we design to it, then build it.
Service & distribution scope →New feeders, sub-distribution panels, and transformer locations sized from a real load study — using the demand factors NEC 551.73 allows for RV parks — so each loop of the park carries today's loads with margin instead of 1975's assumptions.
Trenching & excavation →Park roadways, amenity areas, and common buildings lit properly — poles, bases, feeders, LED fixtures, and photometrics from the same team that builds the distribution the lighting rides on.
Site & parking lot lighting →Scoping It
No two parks price the same, and the pedestal count is rarely the biggest number. These are the variables that actually move the bid:
Under NEC 551.73, the calculated load is built from a per-site allowance, and a 50-amp site carries a much larger allowance than a 30-amp site. How many sites you have — and how many convert to 50-amp — drives the feeder sizes, the transformer capacity, and whether the service itself has to grow.
If the existing service and transformers have headroom, the project stays inside the park. If they don't, the utility's side changes too — and that adds coordination, lead time, and scope. The load study answers this question before anyone buys gear, not after.
Feeder routing is often the largest line item: trench footage, caliche, pavement and utility crossings, and the surface restoration behind the crew. Because we self-perform excavation with our own Cat fleet, that number is ours to control — not a sub's to mark up.
A park that empties out in summer can take large, efficient phases. A park with year-round residents means smaller work zones, more temporary feeds, and more mobilizations. How many spaces can be offline at once is a cost driver — so we plan it with you, not around you.
Phased Around Occupancy
An RV park is a business full of residents, and a resort in season is effectively full. So the work gets sequenced: load study first, then service and feeder capacity, then distribution, then pedestals — phase by phase, loop by loop, so at any given time only a defined group of spaces is offline and everyone else stays powered.
The trenching runs through an occupied park, so we run it the way we run occupied commercial sites: compact machines from our own Cat fleet sized to park roads, trenches opened and closed in short runs, plated crossings where a run has to stay open, and restoration following daily behind the crew so residents aren't living next to open earth. The office gets a written phase schedule to hand out before each phase begins.
For snowbird parks, the calendar is the biggest tool we have. Tucson-area parks that run full from October through April empty out in summer — so we design and permit through the winter, order the long-lead gear, and put the heavy, disruptive phases in the months when most of the spaces are already vacant.
NEC 551 & Engineering
RV parks get their own article of the National Electrical Code — Article 551 — and it changes the math. Service and feeder sizing starts from a per-site figure (9,600 volt-amperes for a 50-amp site) and then applies the demand factors of Table 551.73(A), which step down as the site count climbs — to 41 percent once a park passes 36 sites — because not every site peaks at the same moment. Applied correctly, those factors are the difference between a service you can afford and one sized for a coincidence that never happens. Applied to a park full of July air conditioning, they still have to be checked against how the park actually runs — which is why we start with a load study and real metering data instead of the table alone.
Our in-house engineering produces the load calculations, the one-line, and the permit drawings the AHJ wants to see, and we coordinate the utility's side — transformer capacity, metering, and the inspection sequence before re-energization. The electrical work is self-performed under our CR-11 electrical license (ROC #276948), and the excavation and sitework ride under our KA general engineering license (ROC #312437) — one contractor, one point of responsibility.
Self-Performed
Engineering, electrical, and excavation are all in-house — no trenching sub to schedule around, no engineer waiting on someone else's field data. That is why the phases hold their dates.
Feeder and distribution trenches opened, bedded, and closed by our own operators on our own equipment — compact machines where the park is tight, larger iron where the run is long. Dig, duct, wire, and restore: one crew, one schedule.
We retrofitted the pickleball court lighting at a Tucson RV resort — new LED sports lighting, engineered and delivered inside an operating resort. Same crews, same approach we bring to a park-wide electrical upgrade.
FAQ
Yes — that is how we plan these projects from the first meeting. The work is phased by loop or row so only a defined group of spaces is offline at a time, trenches are opened and restored in short runs, and the heaviest phases are scheduled for summer, when snowbird parks empty out. Your office gets a written phase schedule to share with residents before each phase starts.
Because the park is carrying loads it was never designed for. A modern rig runs two rooftop air conditioners, an electric water heater, and a residential refrigerator — several times the draw the original designers assumed per site — and on a July afternoon those loads all peak together. Long feeder runs sized for the old assumptions sag under it, so breakers trip and voltage drops. New pedestals alone won't fix that; the capacity has to be rebuilt from the service and feeders down, which is exactly how we scope it.
NEC Article 551 is the code article written specifically for RV parks. Instead of adding up the full rating of every pedestal — which would produce an absurdly large service — it assigns each site a per-site allowance and then applies the demand factors in Table 551.73(A), which step down as the site count grows, because not every site peaks at the same instant. Those factors let a park buy the capacity it actually needs rather than a theoretical maximum. We apply them in the load calculation, then sanity-check them against metering data from how your park really runs.
Not all of them, but the market is pushing that direction — newer rigs with two air conditioners want 50-amp service, and NEC 551.71 sets minimum shares for the receptacle mix when sites are built or upgraded. Every site you convert also raises the calculated load upstream, so the 30/50 mix is a design decision, not just a pedestal order. We size the mix around the rigs you actually host and what the service can carry, and conversions can be phased across seasons as demand and budget allow.
The infrastructure is straightforward — modern pedestals are available with metering provisions, and we design and install the metering side either way. Whether and how a park bills residents for power involves your rate structure and the rules that apply to submetered billing in Arizona, which is a business and regulatory question your attorney or accountant should confirm. What we make sure of is that the electrical design doesn't close the door: if you want per-space metering now or later, the pedestals and distribution are built ready for it.
For most Southern Arizona parks, summer — the park empties when the snowbirds leave, which means bigger phases, fewer occupied spaces to work around, and a faster overall schedule. The winter before is when the real work starts: the load study, engineering, permitting, utility coordination, and gear orders all happen while the park is full, so crews and equipment are ready to mobilize the week the spaces open up. Switchgear and transformer lead times reward that kind of head start.
It depends on four drivers: the site count and how much of the 30/50 mix changes, whether the upstream service and transformers have to grow with it, how far the trenching runs and what surfaces it crosses, and how tightly the work has to phase around occupancy. We don't quote parks from a rate sheet — send us a site map, a recent utility bill, and photos of your pedestals and main gear, and we'll run the load study and come back with a scoped, phased, line-item bid.
Related Services
One contractor carries the whole scope. See every service we self-perform.
Service entrance, switchgear, panelboards, transformers, feeders, and standby power.
Open-cut trenching, mass excavation, potholing, and trench safety.
Photometric design, LED conversions, pole repair, bases, and feeders.
Underground utilities, duct banks, grading, primary service, and site lighting.
Send us a site map, a recent utility bill, and photos of your pedestals and main gear. We'll run the load study against NEC 551 and come back with a scoped, phased, line-item bid.
Request a Bid Call (520) 308-6235