FIELD NOTE · SUPPLEMENTAL SET
563 calendar days on SCE's own numbers: who really sequences a service upgrade
ISSUEDJULY 11, 2026DRAWN BY THE NIGHTLY SWEEP
Nobody upgrades a service early. A service upgrade permit is a building admitting its plans outgrew its panel. The designer doesn't set the date the power shows up. SCE's service planning queue sets it, and sequences everything after.
The switchgear is the easy part. It always is. Getting permission to put load through it runs on a different calendar entirely.
SCE publishes that calendar. Its January 2025 document is called "Energization Process Steps and Project Timing." It breaks the work into eight steps: Customer Intake, Engineering and Design, Customer Dependencies, Utility Dependencies, Customer Site Readiness, Utility Site Readiness, Construction, and Service Energization Provided to Customer.
Steps 2, 4, 6 and 7 sit under SCE's control. Step 8 is partial. The other three belong to you.
CPUC Decision D.24-09-020, issued September 17, 2024, set the targets. Rule 16 service line extensions get an average of 182 calendar days and a maximum of 335. Rule 15 distribution line extensions get 182 and 357. Rule 29 and 45, the EV infrastructure rules, get 182 and 335. A main panel upgrade gets 30 calendar days average and 45 maximum.
Every one of those numbers measures only the portions of the process fully under SCE's control, which SCE says itself in a footnote to its own table, and it's the sentence that decides what the targets are worth.
So steps 1, 3 and 5 are outside the clock. Customer intake, customer dependencies including permits and easements, customer site readiness. None of it counted.
Then the two authorities part company. The CPUC fact sheet runs the targets from the date a customer requests energization. SCE's own document says the clock starts once SCE notifies the customer that its application is deemed complete. Sitting in the daylight between those two positions is Application Decision. The CPUC targets that step on its own at an average of 10 calendar days and a maximum of 45.
Of 421 Rule 29 applications received in that window, 70 were energized. Fifty-two were cancelled and 299 were still in progress.
Easy read: the queue ate the year. It's the read I reach for first, and on this data it's wrong.
SCE's own steps averaged 338 calendar days and fell by 36. The customer-controlled steps averaged 522 calendar days and rose by 67. The utility got faster while the job got slower. SCE credits part of its own improvement to pre-submittal stakeholder discussions that produced "more efficient field visits and fewer redesign activities."
Redesign sits on the customer's side of the line. SCE says elsewhere in the same filing that "Customers who do not submit all requirements early in the design process can delay project forward progress." Read that how you want. I read it as sets going in before they were ready.
What SCE does not do is explain the 67 days. It states that it lacks the granularity in its own data to account for the increase on the customer side. So the largest movement in the filing is the one nobody has a cause for, and it's worth leaving that way rather than filling it in.
SCE also states it can't grade itself. "Because SCE is unable to exclude non-IOU time from available project data, SCE is not able to compare its timelines for these projects to CPUC-established targets which are based on IOU-controlled time." Third-party permitting time currently counts against SCE's overall number. So there's a target, there's a filed result, and no way yet to put the two side by side. That's the situation.
For scale on the other end, where upstream capacity has to be added: the CPUC maximums run 684 calendar days for a new or upgraded circuit, 1,021 for a substation upgrade, and 3,242 for a new substation.
It fires on any increase in power supply to a service panel, whether the work is a parking facility addition or an alteration triggered under Section 301.3. The third trigger is a new photovoltaic system covering existing parking spaces, worth knowing if you also build canopies over the same lots.
Read those conditions closely, because they carry the whole thing. A power increase on its own doesn't fire the section. It has to ride with parking facility work, or with an alteration already pulled in under Section 301.3. When it does, a job the owner priced as a panel swap owes EV capable spaces and EVCS, the same way a resurfacing permit owes the stalls inside its own scope of work.
The section carries its own escape hatch. The Exceptions to Section 5.106.5.4 let the enforcing authority grant relief case by case. Two of the three conditions are supply: no local utility power supply, or a local utility that can't provide adequate power. The third is additional local utility infrastructure design requirements, directly related to implementing Section 5.106.5.3, that would adversely impact construction cost.
So the code demands the capacity. Then it excuses the capacity when the utility is the reason you can't have it.
What that scope costs on the single line is written into Section 5.106.5.3.1. Panel space and load capacity for a dedicated 208/240 volt, 40 ampere minimum branch circuit at each EV capable space. Thirty amperes minimum delivered to an installed EVSE at each EVCS. Raceway at least 1 inch.
The electrical system and the on-site distribution transformers have to carry full rated amperage at every EV capable space. And the circuit directory has to mark the reserved breaker spaces "EV CAPABLE."
The counts live in Table 5.106.5.3.1 for new nonresidential construction. Ten to 25 spaces owes 4 EV capable and 2 EVCS, 3 if the occupancy is office or retail. At 26 to 50 it's 8 and 4, 6 for office or retail. At 101 to 150 it's 25 and 12.
Those don't stack, and that's where a bid goes wrong. The code says "Each EVCS shall reduce the number of required EV capable spaces by the same number." The built-out stations come out of the EV capable count rather than sitting on top of it.
At 201 spaces and up it's 20 percent of actual parking spaces EV capable, with EVCS at 50 percent of those, and 75 percent for office and retail. The 2025 cycle added that separate office and retail column, which raises required EVCS for those occupancies.
Section 5.106.5.3.3 also permits an automatic load management system, provided each EVSE delivers 30 amperes minimum on one vehicle and 3.3 kW minimum charging several at once. That's the part electrical contractors end up designing after the owner has already priced the panel.
Reach codes sit on top of all that, and they expire. Under Health and Safety Code Section 17958.7 a city has to make an express finding that a modification is reasonably necessary for local climatic, geological or topographical conditions, and no modification takes effect for any purpose until that finding and the modification are filed with the California Building Standards Commission. Which means the amendments get re-adopted every cycle or they're gone.
Santa Monica did it. Ordinance No. 2831CCS, adopted October 14, 2025, adopts the 2025 code with local amendments. Its predecessor EV reach code, Ordinance No. 2783 (CCS), took effect July 25, 2024 and put the city at CALGreen Tier 1 for EV charging.
Before you price a job on a city's reach code, check whether that city re-filed for the 2025 cycle.
SCE names its own constraints too. Complex designs. Procurement of switches, transformers and cables. Lengthy local AHJ permitting, easements and land rights, upstream capacity upgrades, and municipal street moratoriums on excavation after recent paving.
SCE restates the main panel upgrade target as 30 business days of its own work. Five hundred sixty-three calendar days is what a completed Rule 29 project averaged. Both numbers came out of the same utility.
What ties the service scope to the EV scope is Section 5.106.5.4, not a hunch about which record lands first. When those conditions are met the two belong to the same job, and the bid either carries both or comes up short.
Reporting under D.24-09-020 runs biannual, due March 31 and September 30. Anyway, if you want a delay on the record, the CPUC takes a Customer Delay Reporting Form.
The switchgear is the easy part. It always is. Getting permission to put load through it runs on a different calendar entirely.
SCE publishes that calendar. Its January 2025 document is called "Energization Process Steps and Project Timing." It breaks the work into eight steps: Customer Intake, Engineering and Design, Customer Dependencies, Utility Dependencies, Customer Site Readiness, Utility Site Readiness, Construction, and Service Energization Provided to Customer.
Steps 2, 4, 6 and 7 sit under SCE's control. Step 8 is partial. The other three belong to you.
Nobody agrees when the clock starts
That distinction isn't housekeeping. It's the whole measurement.CPUC Decision D.24-09-020, issued September 17, 2024, set the targets. Rule 16 service line extensions get an average of 182 calendar days and a maximum of 335. Rule 15 distribution line extensions get 182 and 357. Rule 29 and 45, the EV infrastructure rules, get 182 and 335. A main panel upgrade gets 30 calendar days average and 45 maximum.
Every one of those numbers measures only the portions of the process fully under SCE's control, which SCE says itself in a footnote to its own table, and it's the sentence that decides what the targets are worth.
So steps 1, 3 and 5 are outside the clock. Customer intake, customer dependencies including permits and easements, customer site readiness. None of it counted.
Then the two authorities part company. The CPUC fact sheet runs the targets from the date a customer requests energization. SCE's own document says the clock starts once SCE notifies the customer that its application is deemed complete. Sitting in the daylight between those two positions is Application Decision. The CPUC targets that step on its own at an average of 10 calendar days and a maximum of 45.
Where the 563 days actually went
SCE filed its biannual energization report with the Commission on September 30, 2025, covering January 31, 2023 through June 30, 2025, and the number in it is the one to carry into a bid conversation. Completed Rule 29 projects averaged 387 business days, or 563 calendar days, end to end. That's up 27 business days from the prior period. Rule 29 combined with Rule 15 averaged 605 calendar days.Of 421 Rule 29 applications received in that window, 70 were energized. Fifty-two were cancelled and 299 were still in progress.
Easy read: the queue ate the year. It's the read I reach for first, and on this data it's wrong.
SCE's own steps averaged 338 calendar days and fell by 36. The customer-controlled steps averaged 522 calendar days and rose by 67. The utility got faster while the job got slower. SCE credits part of its own improvement to pre-submittal stakeholder discussions that produced "more efficient field visits and fewer redesign activities."
Redesign sits on the customer's side of the line. SCE says elsewhere in the same filing that "Customers who do not submit all requirements early in the design process can delay project forward progress." Read that how you want. I read it as sets going in before they were ready.
What SCE does not do is explain the 67 days. It states that it lacks the granularity in its own data to account for the increase on the customer side. So the largest movement in the filing is the one nobody has a cause for, and it's worth leaving that way rather than filling it in.
SCE also states it can't grade itself. "Because SCE is unable to exclude non-IOU time from available project data, SCE is not able to compare its timelines for these projects to CPUC-established targets which are based on IOU-controlled time." Third-party permitting time currently counts against SCE's overall number. So there's a target, there's a filed result, and no way yet to put the two side by side. That's the situation.
For scale on the other end, where upstream capacity has to be added: the CPUC maximums run 684 calendar days for a new or upgraded circuit, 1,021 for a substation upgrade, and 3,242 for a new substation.
The panel swap that turns into EV work
The schedule argument misses a code question. The 2025 California Green Building Standards Code, Title 24 Part 11, took effect January 1, 2026. Section 5.106.5.4 covers existing buildings and parking facilities being modified.It fires on any increase in power supply to a service panel, whether the work is a parking facility addition or an alteration triggered under Section 301.3. The third trigger is a new photovoltaic system covering existing parking spaces, worth knowing if you also build canopies over the same lots.
Read those conditions closely, because they carry the whole thing. A power increase on its own doesn't fire the section. It has to ride with parking facility work, or with an alteration already pulled in under Section 301.3. When it does, a job the owner priced as a panel swap owes EV capable spaces and EVCS, the same way a resurfacing permit owes the stalls inside its own scope of work.
The section carries its own escape hatch. The Exceptions to Section 5.106.5.4 let the enforcing authority grant relief case by case. Two of the three conditions are supply: no local utility power supply, or a local utility that can't provide adequate power. The third is additional local utility infrastructure design requirements, directly related to implementing Section 5.106.5.3, that would adversely impact construction cost.
So the code demands the capacity. Then it excuses the capacity when the utility is the reason you can't have it.
What that scope costs on the single line is written into Section 5.106.5.3.1. Panel space and load capacity for a dedicated 208/240 volt, 40 ampere minimum branch circuit at each EV capable space. Thirty amperes minimum delivered to an installed EVSE at each EVCS. Raceway at least 1 inch.
The electrical system and the on-site distribution transformers have to carry full rated amperage at every EV capable space. And the circuit directory has to mark the reserved breaker spaces "EV CAPABLE."
The counts live in Table 5.106.5.3.1 for new nonresidential construction. Ten to 25 spaces owes 4 EV capable and 2 EVCS, 3 if the occupancy is office or retail. At 26 to 50 it's 8 and 4, 6 for office or retail. At 101 to 150 it's 25 and 12.
Those don't stack, and that's where a bid goes wrong. The code says "Each EVCS shall reduce the number of required EV capable spaces by the same number." The built-out stations come out of the EV capable count rather than sitting on top of it.
At 201 spaces and up it's 20 percent of actual parking spaces EV capable, with EVCS at 50 percent of those, and 75 percent for office and retail. The 2025 cycle added that separate office and retail column, which raises required EVCS for those occupancies.
Section 5.106.5.3.3 also permits an automatic load management system, provided each EVSE delivers 30 amperes minimum on one vehicle and 3.3 kW minimum charging several at once. That's the part electrical contractors end up designing after the owner has already priced the panel.
Reach codes sit on top of all that, and they expire. Under Health and Safety Code Section 17958.7 a city has to make an express finding that a modification is reasonably necessary for local climatic, geological or topographical conditions, and no modification takes effect for any purpose until that finding and the modification are filed with the California Building Standards Commission. Which means the amendments get re-adopted every cycle or they're gone.
Santa Monica did it. Ordinance No. 2831CCS, adopted October 14, 2025, adopts the 2025 code with local amendments. Its predecessor EV reach code, Ordinance No. 2783 (CCS), took effect July 25, 2024 and put the city at CALGreen Tier 1 for EV charging.
Before you price a job on a city's reach code, check whether that city re-filed for the 2025 cycle.
What belongs on the schedule at bid time
Nobody can tell you the energization date from the drawings. SCE's local planner can. SCE publishes the Local Planning Timeline as a five-step form with the durations left blank for that planner to fill in. Two of the five steps are marked Customer Dependent and a third Job Dependent, which is SCE telling you in form design what it will and won't put a date on. The same form notes that all SCE emergency and storm related work takes priority over customer requested electric service projects.SCE names its own constraints too. Complex designs. Procurement of switches, transformers and cables. Lengthy local AHJ permitting, easements and land rights, upstream capacity upgrades, and municipal street moratoriums on excavation after recent paving.
SCE restates the main panel upgrade target as 30 business days of its own work. Five hundred sixty-three calendar days is what a completed Rule 29 project averaged. Both numbers came out of the same utility.
What ties the service scope to the EV scope is Section 5.106.5.4, not a hunch about which record lands first. When those conditions are met the two belong to the same job, and the bid either carries both or comes up short.
Reporting under D.24-09-020 runs biannual, due March 31 and September 30. Anyway, if you want a delay on the record, the CPUC takes a Customer Delay Reporting Form.