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Earlier this year, Mountain View suspended its ban on gas appliances in new homes and commercial buildings to comply with a federal court ruling. Now it has come back with an ordinance that will require new developments to prepare for the possibility of going all-electric in the future.
In a unanimous vote, the City Council approved an ordinance to add electrical prewiring requirements for all newly constructed homes and commercial buildings, as well as for buildings undergoing major renovations, at its meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 22.
“The main idea behind electrical prewiring is really installing all the electrical infrastructure and putting it in place to make it that much easier to swap from a natural gas appliance to an electrical one,” said Assistant Community Development Director Lindsay Hagan, who presented to the council.
When Mountain View suspended its all-electric reach codes in April, it did not have a backup plan in place. Since then, the city has been working to find a solution to phase out gas infrastructure legally. It settled on electric prewiring requirements as the first step, with energy performance requirements expected to follow later next year, according to the council report.
State building codes already require electrical prewiring for new developments, but only for residential construction. Mountain View is expanding the requirement to apply to all buildings, including non-residential developments like commercial kitchens.
“We’re talking about installing all the electrical components – from the service panel to the installed natural gas or propane appliance within a building,” Hagan said, explaining the intent behind the city law. This not only includes installing electrical lines, conduits and outlets, but also labeling them and providing adequate space for future electric appliances and planning for them in construction drawings.
It’s convenient and efficient to do this work at the point of construction, Hagan said, noting that it would make it easier for people to switch over to electric appliances later on if their gas appliances break down or are not readily available.
Mayor Pat Showalter added that she hoped it would spur people to go all-electric more quickly. “Even though what we’re only requiring is prewiring, I hope that it also functions as an incentive because if you have to put the wiring in anyway, maybe you just will go ahead and be a little more inspired to put in the electric appliance in the first place,” she said.
The new ordinance will go into effect on Jan. 1.
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I applaud this unanimous decision by our Council, and the staff work that brought them this proposal.
Left hand: housing is too expensive. Costs are too high
Right hand: Developers: you need to put in twice as much infrastructure including big thick copper wiring.
And when will PG&E install the infrastructure to be able to supply a minimum of 200 amps to all of these homes going all electric (including those all electric vehicles we are supposed to buy) in every home in Mountain View? And who gets to pay for that as well?
Or did the City Council forget that it takes Multiple Months to get that approved and then an additional six months minimum get the plans approved by PG&E to even run the required cables to your home, not to mention the three months backlog by the private firms to dig, lay the cable, then wait for PG&E to actually sign off on the connection?
Putting in the support for all electric during a “major” renovation sounds good until you look at how much it’s going to cost to actually connect all those circuits to the grid. Yea, connecting it to the panel is easy, getting enough power TO the panel is the killer.
Unless you live in a neighborhood with your power delivered by those nasty power poles and ugly power lines running frome the poles to your house! Then getting that power is pretty cheap (relatively speaking.)
Good thing we opted earlier to be “progressive” and buried all those power lines in our neighborhood. No unsightly power lines, just digging up the streets and yards every time someone has a “major” renovation.
Ramirez and CA Native bring up valid points:
In addition, has council received the memo how much electricity of the future will still be generated by both natural gas (NG) and…additional capacity from nuclear reactors?
US Department of Energy is calling for 100 nuclear reactors to be built in the US.
Does Council understand the variation in the flow (e.g AMP/Watts) is much more variable with Solar and Wind (S&W) vs. the steady flow from Nuclear?
I understand how it makes people feel good to do everything they can do to get rid of NG. But the practical reality is that S&W have a lot of short comings. So we will be stuck with NG as the Bridge Fuel to the future (at least it gets reduces the use of coal). What will be the future? Looks like S&W supported by NG to make up for S&W shortcomings. And nuclear to provide large quantities of electricity with a steady flow of power with no emmisions. I am sure there will be many unhappy people, but this seems to be the direction.