For business owners, property managers, and facilities staff across both valleys, we install and upgrade the three systems a commercial building most often runs short of: standby power, EV charging, and service capacity. Three-phase capable at 208Y/120 and 480Y/277, permitted and inspected, and scheduled around your operating hours rather than ours.
A dark building is a closed building. Appointments get rescheduled, refrigerated stock goes off, payment terminals and the network drop, and the work that was booked for that afternoon moves to a competitor. The cost of the outage is rarely the outage itself — it is the day of trading around it and the reputational damage from the customers who were turned away.
Most businesses in these two valleys are fed three-phase — 208Y/120 for retail, medical, and small office, 480Y/277 where there is real mechanical load. That changes the equipment, the conductor sizing, the overcurrent protection, and the transfer scheme. A contractor whose experience stops at 120/240 single-phase is guessing at the part that matters most.
Commercial work goes to plan check, not an over-the-counter permit, and the utility service path is its own coordination job with its own lead time. Generators add a South Coast AQMD layer on top. None of that transfers from the residential process, and discovering it mid-project is how a two-week job becomes a two-month one.
Our commercial line is not a separate catalog. It is the same three things we are known for — standby generators, EV charging, and main panel and service upgrades — engineered for a commercial service, a commercial permit path, and a building that cannot simply stop while we work. What changes between the residential version and this one is the voltage class, the utility coordination, the plan-check route, and how the shutdown is sequenced. American Electric Co has held an active CSLB C-10 electrical contractor license, #938027, since 2007, and is licensed, bonded and insured.
Keep trading through an outage instead of closing the doors.
Three-phase standby sizing against your actual connected load, with an automatic transfer switch sized to a commercial service rather than a house. Refrigeration, payment systems, server rooms, and lighting stay up without anyone on site flipping anything.
Residential Backup Generator Installation →Add charging your service can actually carry.
Multi-port workplace, multifamily, and fleet installs, including networked charge management and load sharing across ports so the site does not need a service upgrade it cannot justify. Stall layout, bollards, wheel stops, and trenching are part of the job, not an afterthought.
Residential EV Charger Installation →More capacity without shutting the business down for a week.
Switchboard and panelboard work at 208Y/120 and 480Y/277, coordinated with SCE or LADWP on the commercial service path — meter section, CT cabinet, and the utility cut-in. Phased so the parts of your operation that cannot stop, don't.
Residential Main Panel Upgrade →Medical and dental offices, where refrigerated stock, sterilisation equipment, and a booked day of appointments all depend on the same service. Retail, where the tills, the network, and the walk-in are the business. Small business and light commercial operations running equipment that does not tolerate an unplanned stop. And property managers responsible for a building's service, common areas, and the tenants who have to keep working inside it.
What they have in common is that the electrical system is not a background utility to them — it is operating infrastructure, and the questions they ask us are about downtime, sequencing, and who coordinates with the utility. Those are the questions this page is built to answer.
Voltage class. A house is fed 120/240 single-phase. A commercial building is usually three-phase — 208Y/120 in retail, medical, and small office space, and 480Y/277 where there is significant mechanical or HVAC load, often with a step-down transformer feeding the 120-volt receptacle panels. Everything downstream follows from which of those you have: the generator and its alternator, the transfer switch, the conductor and conduit sizing, the overcurrent protection, and whether an existing switchboard can be extended or has to be replaced. Where a service is single-phase and the load has outgrown it, conversion to three-phase is a conversation with the utility before it is a conversation about equipment.
Utility coordination. Changing the size or configuration of a commercial service is not something a contractor does unilaterally. It goes through Southern California Edison or LADWP depending on the address, and it is normally the longest lead item in the whole project — frequently longer than the permit. Depending on service size it can involve a new meter section, a CT cabinet, a relocated or revised service point, and a scheduled cut-in date the rest of the work has to be planned around. We open the request and carry it, rather than sequencing our own work on an assumption and hoping the date lands.
Permitting. Commercial electrical work generally goes to plan check, which means drawings, a review cycle, and corrections — not the over-the-counter permit a residential circuit might get. The authority depends on the address and the two halves of our territory do not share one: Santa Clarita permits through the City of Santa Clarita Building & Safety Division, while Valley Glen and the surrounding San Fernando Valley are City of Los Angeles and go through LADBS. Unincorporated county addresses go through Los Angeles County. Standby generators add a South Coast Air Quality Management District layer on top of the building permit, with its own permitting threshold and its own limits on operating and testing hours — a step that catches out contractors who have only ever installed residential standby units.
Scheduling and tenancy. A house can go dark for a day. A business usually cannot, so the shutdown is designed before the installation is. That means phased cutovers where only part of the building is de-energised at a time, transfer work scheduled for evenings or weekends by arrangement, and a written sequence everyone has agreed to in advance. In leased space it also means the landlord or property manager is part of the project: consent for work touching the building's service or electrical room, building rules on access and work windows, and a certificate of insurance issued before anyone mobilises. We handle that coordination as part of the job rather than treating it as the client's problem to solve.
We walk the building with whoever actually runs it. Existing service and voltage class, switchgear condition, available space, the route a new feeder would have to take, and — the part that decides everything else — which circuits genuinely cannot go down and which can.
A measured load study, not a rule-of-thumb multiplier. What the service is rated for, what it actually draws at peak, and what headroom is left. On EV charging this is the gating question on the entire project; on a panel upgrade it is the difference between a right-sized service and an expensive guess.
We open the commercial service request with SCE or LADWP, work the meter section and CT cabinet requirements, and file for plan check with the authority that covers your address. Santa Clarita permits through the City of Santa Clarita Building & Safety Division; Valley Glen falls under the City of Los Angeles and goes through LADBS. The two paths do not transfer, and we confirm which one applies before anything is filed. Generator projects add South Coast AQMD review.
The cutover is scheduled around your operating hours, not ours — evenings and weekends by arrangement, phased where a single shutdown is not survivable. We coordinate with your property manager or landlord on access and building rules, and a certificate of insurance goes to whoever needs one before we are on site.
Terminations torqued to specification, transfer and load-transfer sequences tested, panels and switchgear labeled, and the inspection scheduled and attended through sign-off. You get closed permit paperwork, an as-built schedule of what is on which circuit, and the option of a maintenance agreement so nobody has to remember to exercise a generator.
Serving Santa Clarita, Valencia, Stevenson Ranch, Castaic, Newhall, and surrounding communities. Commercial permitting runs through the City of Santa Clarita Building & Safety Division.
View Santa Clarita →Serving Valley Glen, North Hollywood, Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks, Burbank, and Northridge. Commercial permitting runs through LADBS under the City of Los Angeles.
View Valley Glen →We'll walk the building with whoever runs it, look at the service and the switchgear, and come back with a written scope, a sequence, and a schedule you can plan an operation around.
