Yes, this is true. BUT: I do only industrial. I seriously doubt I could be cost competative at commercial. I know I couldn't be cost competative with residential.
For example, I suspect that when I did my own house, it probably didn't cost me much more than that twice that of a residential grade electrician do minimum spec job. Or another way, maybe I made a dolar an hour doing residential.
Roping a house just doesn't take much in the troubleshooting department. It's about reptative work efficiency, speed, and overhead.
So, yeah, it's different.
ice
Different for some, not so much for others. Depends on what you regularly get involved with. I do a little bit of everything, that is what the demand is in a rural population area. I do just about anything from adding an outlet to an existing dwelling to large switchgear and complex controls. Farms are not the little ma and pa operation they once were, with exception to some small operations still clinging on, they are big business anymore. Crop farmers have more acres of land, genetics, and other agronomy practices make for higher yields, which means there is more grain, more fertilizer, more of everything, including more power and automation to make it work. Livestock operations are same way, it becomes more profitable to operate on a large scale. There are very few guys with just a dozen head of cattle or pigs, they have hundreds. Along with that comes automated feeding processes, as it is not ecomomically feasible to do so by old fashioned man power, labor costs are too high even with cheap labor.
Farm installations are becoming more of an industrial site. Sure I don't run into facilities as large as an automobile manufacturing plant, or a steel mill, but there is a lot of the same stuff around just on a smaller scale. I have never installed a 2000 amp service, but does not mean I have not worked in places that have one. The base rules are still the same for a 60 amp service anyway, you just have bigger components and parallel conductors, which is not uncommon on 400 - 800 amp circuits which I don't do everyday but do run into often enough they are not that unusual.
I have a dairy farm I do occasional work at. This farm is owned by third or fourth generation of a family. I can assure you the first generation may not even used much for electricity at all, then a 60 amp 120/240 service at the barn was considered a lot of power at one time. The new barn (up to 10 years old at the most) has 277/480 volt service 800 amps, and instead of milking just two to four cows at once they can milk 30 - 40 cows at once.
Some of the city guys may limit themselves to one type of installation only, and the guys employed by an industrial facility only see that facility, but some of us get all around the industry.
