Has anyone ever gone dumpster diving at your power company's main base to pick up some old fixtures, and how'd you get away with it?  I know Ameren Illinois' main supply room and headquarters is locked up tighter than Fort Knox.  I am just wondering what people have scored, if anything.

When a local ice arena was being demolished, they put some dumpsters outside so anyone could take the bricks. I tried to find some smashed up lights in them, but found nothing. I also found a lot of vintage light bulbs and an old stage spotlight in a dumpster at a university, but the spotlight was too damaged for me to use. I put it by the garbage can and someone took it like 10 minutes later. I kept the light bulbs, though.

Nope, place is tighter than a tendon here.

Here when they do work themselfes, they take it all back to the depot. i did buy one from them once - Elba Romania PVB7A - 70s 2x250W Mercury lantern. (Actually the one i got lived most of its life as an HPS conversion, and i will keep it that way). It was in a place that they were reconstructing and i expected it to come down, so i looked for when it is gone. The day i seen it is, i went to the department and asked for it. Costed me about 200 NIS ($50), the sale process was all very official - they sent me to pay through the council payments department (where you pay for all the council services) and i got a proper receipt, that names the thing as "misc equipment - streetlight"

Sometimes they hire outside contractors to do work for them, those are much more happy to throw things in the nearest dumpster to where they do their work. Among stuff i found over the last few years : 2 AEG Minikoffers 125W Mercury, 8 Lithonia VR4CV 100W MH (lowbays - were installed under a bridge), and parts of AEG and Ben Hur 100W HPS posttop lanterns (those were scattered between no less than 10 different trash cans in a park + bigger parts like outer shades thrown plain in the grass, in the end there were enough parts to build 4 complete lanterns + few more spares)

In private places doing rebuilds you usually find the most things in the trash, as they throw everything out and usually dint mind you taking it. But you find less HID stuff there, more Fluorescent

I am a regular dumpster diver and  bulky item pick up digger as i am a metal scrapper.  Also i rescue many lights and  vintage tubes this way.  Even incandescents left in portable lamps.  I found 3 slimeline F72T12 fixture
With deep ballast channel.  All are singke lamper .  I gave Nickfan one of them.  They came from North Starr Mall area in San Antonio on the curb.

Except for townships, small towns or villages, power companies control almost no lighting up in Canada.

But about 10 years ago I sort of hit the jackpot. A dumpster with trash from a few big-mall entrances being renovated had at least a dozen 100w MV metal recesed boxes complete with a lamp shown attached. I only unscrewed one lamp just to see what was being thrown out, quickly pocketing it in my jacket. I wasn't into collecting at the time and I didn't realize until much later it was a MV lamp. This dumpster made me aware that collecting might be easy, so I got hooked after this. The dumpster had been emptied the following day or possibly overnight. Rats!