Temporary Power FAQ

Temporary power is a permitted, metered electrical service installed on a construction site before the building has a permanent one. Usually that is a temporary power pole carrying a meter socket, main breaker, panel and GFCI-protected outlets, grounded and braced to SDG&E’s standard. It runs the trades, the tools and the site trailer through the build and comes out once the permanent service is energized.

Allow two to four weeks from go-ahead to an energized pole across most of the county. The electrical permit is usually quick; the SDG&E meter set is the part that carries a queue and it is why we file the service application as early as your drawings allow. If your start date will not wait, we will bridge it with a generator and take that off rent the week the pole goes live.

Yes, both, on every job. We pull the electrical permit with the city or the county, file the service application with SDG&E including the site plan and load information they need, and meet the inspector on site. You do not fill anything in.

A standard residential temporary power pole in San Diego County typically lands between $1,200 and $3,000 installed, permitted and removed at the end. Amperage, the distance from the point of connection, and whether the utility is overhead or underground are what move the number. Larger and three-phase commercial services are quoted per project.

Yes. Crews run daily to Chula Vista, Oceanside, Escondido, Carlsbad, El Cajon, Vista, Encinitas, National City, Poway, La Jolla and Coronado, plus everywhere in between and the back country beyond. If you are not sure whether we reach your site, call and ask — the answer is usually yes.

It depends almost entirely on how long the job runs. Below roughly two months, generator rental usually wins because it avoids the install and the utility wait. Past that, a metered temporary service is cheaper and quieter, and the crossover comes sooner on a site with a big load. We will run both numbers against your actual schedule rather than steering you to one.

Yes, and most sites do. Power, lighting, cooling, WiFi and cameras on one quote, one delivery run and one point of contact costs less than sourcing each from a different yard, and it means one person is accountable when something needs moving as the build changes.

Temporary power is a permitted, metered electrical service installed on a construction site before the building has a permanent one. It is normally a temporary power pole carrying a meter socket, main breaker, panel and GFCI-protected outlets, grounded and braced to the utility’s standard. It powers the trades, the tools and the site trailer through the build and is removed once the permanent service is energized.

In most San Diego County jurisdictions a temporary service is tied to an active building permit, so it can stay as long as the permit is live — commonly six to twelve months, and extendable while construction is genuinely ongoing. Once the permanent service is energized or the permit lapses, the temporary service has to come out. If your permit is close to expiring, sort the extension before the meter is pulled rather than after.

Three things have to happen: an electrical permit from the city or county, a service application with SDG&E, and a compliant pole installed, inspected and signed off. We handle all three. Realistically, allow two to four weeks from the go-ahead to an energized pole in most of the county, with the utility meter set being the part that carries the queue.

Yes. A temporary service needs a main disconnect that shuts off all ungrounded conductors, and on a standard temp pole that is a main breaker in the panel ahead of the branch circuits. It also needs GFCI protection on the receptacles and correct bonding of the neutral and ground at the service disconnect. An inspector will look for all three.

Two, in practice. The code allows a single rod if it tests at 25 ohms or less, but almost nobody tests, so the standard approach is to drive two eight-foot rods at least six feet apart and bond them to the service. That is what inspectors in this county expect to see and it is what we install as standard.

The electricity is identical — it is the same utility service and the same meter. The difference is the installation: temporary power is a self-supporting, removable service sized for construction load and tied to a building permit, while permanent power is the service that terminates at the building itself and stays for the life of the property. Temporary services also require GFCI protection on all receptacles, which permanent services do not everywhere.

Most residential temp poles in San Diego County land between $1,200 and $3,000 installed, permitted and removed. Amperage, the distance from the point of connection, and whether the utility is overhead or underground are what move the number. We quote flat-rate after a site walk, with the removal already included rather than billed later.

It is portable gear that takes one large feed from the temporary service and splits it into multiple protected outlets near where people are working. The small ones are usually called spider boxes and give you several GFCI-protected 120V and 240V receptacles from a 50A or 100A feed. Larger distribution boxes handle three-phase and feed separate areas of a big site.

On a site with decent cellular coverage, expect roughly 50 to 300 Mbps down on a single 5G carrier, which comfortably runs a trailer, a plan set in the cloud, video calls and a camera system. Bonding two carriers raises both the speed and, more importantly, the reliability. On a poor-coverage site an external antenna at height often makes more difference than any change of hardware.

Ours is a monthly rental that includes the hardware, the data and support, and there is no contract or early termination charge. Consumer hotspot plans usually tie you into a term and bill an early exit, which does not suit a job that might finish six weeks early or run three months long.

Yes, and more than people expect. Concrete, steel decking, foil-faced insulation and stucco lath all attenuate WiFi badly, so a router that covers a whole floor plate on a bare slab may barely reach the next room once the walls go up. It is why we plan coverage as the structure changes and add access points rather than assuming one unit will cover the job from start to finish.

Poorly. A concrete wall can cut a WiFi signal by a large factor, and rebar makes it worse by acting as a partial shield. Cellular signal has the same problem, which is why the antenna belongs outside the structure with a cable run in, rather than on a router sitting inside it.

We check that before quoting. If no carrier gives usable service at your address even with a high-gain antenna at height, we will say so and put low-orbit satellite on the site instead. It costs a little more and it works essentially anywhere with a clear view of the sky.

Yes, and on multi-camera sites that is normally the cheaper approach. One good site connection carrying six cameras beats six separate cellular data plans on both cost and reliability. We size the connection for the camera load when the two are ordered together.

One that does not depend on the site having power or internet. On a live job that means a solar-powered, battery-backed camera with its own cellular connection, mounted high enough that it cannot be pulled down and aimed at the approach rather than the fence. Resolution matters less than placement and night-time illumination — a 4K camera pointed at the wrong thing is worth nothing.

Yes, and they are what we install as standard. Each camera carries a cellular modem and uploads over the mobile network, so the system works from the day it goes up with no site internet at all. If the site later gets a connection, larger systems can move onto it and cut the running cost.

Ours do not. They run on solar panels with battery backup sized to carry them through several overcast days, which in San Diego is more margin than the weather usually demands. That matters most in the first weeks of a job, when the lot is bare and there is no temporary service yet.

Budget roughly $200 to $600 per camera per month depending on the specification and whether it runs on cellular or a site connection. A mobile surveillance trailer with a mast and multiple cameras costs more but covers ground that several individual units could not. Everything is a flat monthly rate including connectivity and storage.

Visible cameras plus lighting reduce it substantially, and units with a floodlight and a speaker do better still because being addressed out loud moves most opportunists along before anything is taken. Where a theft does happen, off-site recorded footage is what turns a police report into something actionable and what an insurer will actually accept.

Yes. Live view and recorded playback run in an app or a browser, with access for as many people as you want — you, the superintendent, the owner. Overnight motion alerts go to whoever needs them, with detection zones set so passing cars do not generate alerts all night.

For construction, renting is almost always cheaper. You are paying for the set only while it is on site, and the rental covers maintenance, servicing, fuelling and a replacement unit if it faults. Buying makes sense when a business needs permanent standby cover year after year, at which point a fixed installation usually beats a portable set anyway.

It depends on what runs at once and on the largest motor on the site, because starting current is far higher than running current. A single trade with hand tools might need 5kW to 10kW; a typical residential build 25kW to 60kW; a commercial site with hoists and compressors 100kW and up. Send us the equipment list and we will size it rather than guess.

A typical 2,000 square foot home needs roughly 20kW to 25kW to run essentially everything at once, including central air conditioning. If you only need the essentials — refrigerator, lights, furnace fan, a few outlets — 7kW to 10kW covers it. Air conditioning is what drives the number up, because the compressor start is the biggest single load in the house.

Never back-feed a generator into a wall outlet to power a house — it energizes the utility line and can kill a lineman working on it. Use a transfer switch or an interlock. Beyond that, avoid running sensitive electronics off a non-inverter set without protection, do not overload it with high-draw appliances starting together, and never run one indoors or in a garage, including with the door open.

A small portable set is roughly $150 to $300 a day. A mid-range towable construction unit runs about $500 to $1,500 a week, which is a much better rate than the daily equivalent. Large three-phase sets are priced per project. Fuel is normally billed separately on what is actually burned.

A properly sized diesel set is designed for continuous duty and will run around the clock as long as it is fueled and serviced on hours. The thing to avoid is running a large set at very light load for weeks, which causes wet-stacking and eventual damage — another reason sizing to the actual load matters more than buying headroom you will not use.

Yes. We position it for airflow, noise and fuelling access, connect it to your distribution, check grounding and bonding, and commission it under load before we leave. We are a licensed C-10 electrical contractor, so the connection is done properly rather than left for somebody on site to work out.

Roughly $100 to $200 a day, $350 to $700 a week, or $900 to $1,800 a month per unit in San Diego County. LED towers sit slightly above diesel metal-halide units on rent but well below them on fuel, so on a long booking they usually come out cheaper overall. Solar and battery towers carry a premium for running silent.

Most towable diesel light towers carry a generator in the 6kW to 20kW range, with the fixtures using only a fraction of that. That leaves spare capacity on the side outlets for hand tools and small equipment, which is genuinely useful on a small site. It is not enough to run a site of any size, though — for that you want a proper generator.

A diesel tower with metal-halide fixtures typically runs 50 to 60 hours on a tank, so most of a working week of nights. LED towers on the same tank commonly reach 100 hours or more because the fixtures draw so much less. Solar and battery units are limited by battery capacity rather than fuel, so we size those to the hours you actually need.

For small loads, yes. The auxiliary outlets will run hand tools, chargers and a small compressor comfortably. Do not plan a site around it — the generator is sized for the fixtures with some headroom, not for a construction load, and overloading it leaves you with no light as well as no power.

Cal/OSHA sets minimum illumination in foot-candles by area type: broadly 5 foot-candles for general construction areas, walkways and warehouses, 10 for general construction plant and shops, and 3 for concrete placement and excavation work. Corridors, exits and stairways need to be lit whenever anyone is using them. We plan coverage to clear those levels rather than to just meet them.

Yes. Solar and battery towers have no engine, so they run completely silent with no exhaust. On a residential street or a noise-sensitive site that is the only specification we will recommend, because a diesel tower running through the night generates complaints and complaints stop jobs.

On a construction site, more than a residential chart suggests. As a rough starting point a 1 ton unit (12,000 BTU) covers about 400 to 500 square feet of a normal room, but an unfinished building with a glazed elevation, no insulation and equipment running can easily need two or three times that per square foot. We size against the actual heat load rather than guessing from area.

On a construction schedule, usually yes. The comparison is not against comfort, it is against lost afternoons in an inland August and against redoing finish work that was installed outside its temperature and humidity window. Both of those cost far more than the rental. For an occupied building with a failed system, it is what keeps the business trading.

Yes, always. A portable air conditioner moves heat rather than destroying it, so the hot exhaust has to be ducted somewhere it genuinely leaves the space — a window, a roof outlet, a louvre. Venting into a ceiling void or an adjacent room just relocates the problem, and it is the most common mistake we are called out to fix.

Around $150 to $400 a week for a 1 to 2 ton unit and $400 to $900 a week for 3 to 5 tons in San Diego County, with monthly rates working out considerably better. Delivery, ducting and setup are inside our rate rather than billed separately.

Yes. We rent electric and indirect-fired heaters for winter slab cures, drying out structures and holding finish work inside its temperature window. Indirect-fired units vent combustion products outside the space, which is the right choice whenever people are working in there.

It depends on the unit and the service. A 1 ton portable runs on a standard 120V circuit; 3 and 5 ton units generally need 208/240V and a dedicated circuit, and several of them together will make a 100 amp temporary service look small. We check that against your site service before delivery, and if it needs upgrading we will say so first.