Data · City of Calgary open data
Calgary electrical work, by the numbers
Every electrical permit the City of Calgary has issued since 2018-05, counted by year, type, quadrant and community, with the share of inspections that fail. Aggregates only: no addresses, no names, no contractor rankings.
The city’s electrical workload has nearly doubled
Electrical permits issued per calendar year. Solar photovoltaic systems have their own permit type, so the copper segment is an exact count, not an estimate.1
A permit is not a job: one permit can cover a whole new building, and an annual facility permit covers many jobs at one site. One row per inspection. Permits are counted once however many inspections they had.
Solar PV permits peaked at 4,905 in 2024
Most Calgary solar permits are retrofits on existing buildings rather than panels built into new homes.1
15.6% of inspections failed in 2025
Share of electrical inspections with a pass or fail result that the City marked “Not Acceptable”, meaning the work had to be corrected and re-inspected. The rate was 13.4% in 2023.1
Inspection rows by year of completeddate. notAcceptableShare = Not Acceptable / (Acceptable + Acceptable - Close Permit + Not Acceptable). Cancelled, Not Required, VOC and blank outcomes are excluded from the share; the dataset does not define VOC. “VOC” results are not defined by the City and are left out. Read how electrical permits and inspections work.
Where the permits are
Electrical permits issued 2023–2025 by the quadrant in the street address. Where the permit address matches the City’s assessment roll, 90% were at residential properties.1
The 25 busiest communities, 2023–2025
Distinct electrical permits by community. About a quarter of permits carry no community on the permit record; we fill those from the City’s assessment roll by address. The last column shows each community’s rank without that fill.1
| Rank | Community | Permits | New construction | Solar PV | Rank, record only |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MahoganySoutheast | 2,667 | 1,007 | 720 | 2 |
| 2 | CornerstoneNortheast | 2,350 | 1,045 | 289 | 1 |
| 3 | LivingstonNorth | 1,680 | 868 | 144 | 3 |
| 4 | SetonSoutheast | 1,659 | 915 | 299 | 5 |
| 5 | Saddle RidgeNortheast | 1,434 | 748 | 76 | 7 |
| 6 | CarringtonNorth | 1,353 | 581 | 306 | 4 |
| 7 | Sage HillNorth | 1,346 | 855 | 118 | 12 |
| 8 | LegacySouth | 1,251 | 387 | 235 | 6 |
| 9 | CranstonSoutheast | 1,243 | 252 | 220 | 8 |
| 10 | TuscanyNorthwest | 1,228 | 253 | 325 | 10 |
| 11 | BelmontSouth | 1,186 | 806 | 120 | 20 |
| 12 | EvanstonNorth | 1,177 | 316 | 204 | 9 |
| 13 | RangeviewSoutheast | 1,110 | 734 | 150 | 11 |
| 14 | BownessNorthwest | 991 | 509 | 65 | 35 |
| 15 | Glacier RidgeNorth | 964 | 421 | 250 | 13 |
| 16 | Pine CreekSouth | 955 | 575 | 40 | 16 |
| 17 | Auburn BaySoutheast | 933 | 201 | 204 | 14 |
| 18 | Lake BonavistaSouth | 920 | 102 | 140 | 15 |
| 19 | West SpringsWest | 916 | 345 | 141 | 25 |
| 20 | HaskayneNorthwest | 885 | 458 | 81 | 22 |
| 21 | Downtown Commercial CoreCentre | 857 | 38 | 0 | 63 |
| 22 | Douglasdale/GlenSoutheast | 854 | 172 | 168 | 28 |
| 23 | McKenzie TowneSoutheast | 853 | 151 | 125 | 19 |
| 24 | RedstoneNortheast | 852 | 503 | 33 | 30 |
| 25 | EvergreenSouth | 843 | 157 | 162 | 17 |
Homeowners pulled 5,834 of the 103,067 permits in 2023–2025 (5.7%); the rest were contractor permits. New suburbs lead because every new home needs its own wiring permit.
How these numbers are counted
Categories are the City’s own permit types, so they are mutually exclusive and cover every permit. The script that produces this page re-runs the same queries against the City’s API.
| Category | Permits | Rule in the City’s data |
|---|---|---|
| Solar photovoltaic system | 12,710 | permittypecode = 'PhotoCon' (Contractor's Photovoltaic System Permit) |
| Fire alarm system | 1,212 | permittypecode = 'FireCon' (Contractor's Fire Alarm Permit) |
| Communications cabling | 47 | permittypecode = 'CommCon' (Contractor's Communications Permit) |
| Sign installation | 4 | permittypecode = 'SignCon' (Contractor's Sign Installation Permit) |
| Annual facility permit (ongoing maintenance/alterations at one facility) | 687 | permittypecode = 'AnnuEPCon' (Contractor's Annual Electrical Permit) |
| Homeowner (owner-performed) electrical work | 5,834 | permittypecode = 'EPHome' (Homeowner's Electrical Permit) |
| Contractor wiring in new construction | 35,454 | permittypecode = 'EPCon' AND workclassgroup = 'New' |
| Contractor alterations, additions and renovations to existing buildings | 47,119 | permittypecode = 'EPCon' AND workclassgroup IN ('Improvement', 'Home Occupation') |
- Calendar year of issueddate. Permits with no issueddate are excluded from yearly counts.
- The street-address quadrant suffix (NW, NE, SW, SE) on the permit address. Addresses with no suffix are "unassigned".
- The open data does not identify EV chargers, service upgrades or panel changes, and carries no job values, so this page does not estimate them.
- Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – City of Calgary.
Sources
- Electrical Permits and Inspections (dataset vxgy-id5s)The City of Calgary, Open Government Licence – City of Calgary · queried 2026-09-25