2025 electric-ready requirements.

Ready is wiring, not an appliance you have to buy

Electric-ready is the part of the 2025 Energy Code that people either miss entirely or mistake for a gas ban. It is neither. It is a set of mandatory provisions that say: if you put a gas or propane appliance in a newly constructed single-family building, you also leave behind the wire, the breaker space, the clearance and the drain that a future electric replacement would need. The appliance you install today is still gas. The house is simply built so that swapping it later is a service call rather than a remodel. The CEC states the goal plainly — to make the transition to heat pump and high-efficiency electric equipment more feasible and cost-effective in the future.

The provisions sit in four subsections of Section 150.0 — (n) for water heating, (t) for space heating, (u) for cooktops and (v) for clothes dryers — plus (s) for battery storage readiness, which runs on a different trigger. Being mandatory matters more than it sounds: the Residential Compliance Manual says there are no performance or prescriptive electric-ready requirements for single-family buildings, which means there is no trade-off available. A tighter envelope does not buy you out of a missing 240V circuit the way it can buy you out of a prescriptive window U-factor. If you are working through the whole cycle, the 2025 versus 2022 comparison covers what moved elsewhere; this page is only the readiness set.

The four electric-ready subsections, and what each one asks for

Each one is triggered by installing the gas or propane version of that appliance in a new single-family building. Install the electric version instead and the requirement disappears — nothing extra is asked of an all-electric house.

Sections and requirements from the CEC’s 2025 single-family electric-ready guidance and Table 10-1 of the 2025 Single-Family Residential Compliance Manual.

Two details from the manual settle most of the arguments I see. A gas range counts, because the range contains a cooktop, so §150.0(u) applies. And if you install a heat pump water heater of any kind — split-system or integrated, 120V or 240V — §150.0(n) does not apply at all: it bites only when a gas water heater goes in. The one thing 2025 changed in this set is the removal of the 10 AWG copper wire requirement from §150.0(n)1Ai. The branch circuit still has to be rated 30 amps minimum; the wire gauge is no longer prescribed.

Battery-ready, §150.0(s), is a different rule with a different trigger

BESS-ready has nothing to do with whether you install gas. It applies to every newly constructed single-family building of one or two dwelling units where the load-serving entity provides electrical service greater than 125 amps. The compliance manual lists both of those as 2025 changes: revise BESS-ready to apply only where service exceeds 125 amps, and clarify that it does not apply if a battery is installed. Where it does apply, the code asks for:

• Either BESS-ready interconnection equipment with a minimum backed-up capacity of 60 amps and at least four BESS-supplied branch circuits, or a dedicated raceway of at least 1-inch trade size from the main service to a subpanel that supplies those circuits, labeled “Subpanel shall include all backed-up load circuits.” Before a battery is installed, the branch circuits may be fed from the main service panel.
• At least four branch circuits collocated at that panel. One must serve the refrigerator, one must be a lighting circuit near the primary egress, and one must serve a sleeping-room receptacle outlet. The fourth can be anything.
• A main panelboard with a minimum busbar rating of 225 amps. A 200-amp panel can satisfy this if it is marked with a 225-amp busbar rating; where the panel carries no separate busbar marking, the CEC says it does not qualify.
• Reserved space for a future system isolation device or transfer switch within 3 feet of the main panelboard, with raceways run between the two so a backup source can be connected later.

Three carve-outs are worth knowing. Townhouses are out — the code defines a townhouse as a single-family dwelling unit in a group of three or more attached units, and the CEC says townhouses do not have to meet §150.0(s). Duplexes are in, twice — each unit is treated as its own single-family home and needs its own panel with a 225-amp busbar. And a new building on a residential lot that contains no dwelling unit — a pool house, a studio, an office — is out entirely. Note that a townhouse is still a single-family building under the Energy Code definition, so it keeps the §150.0(n) and (t) through (v) readiness set and the rest of the single-family requirements; what it loses is §150.0(s) alone. Buildings that meet the code’s multifamily definition run on a different chapter and a different form set — see multifamily.

How this lands on an ADU

Only a detached, newly constructed ADU picks up the full set. The CEC treats a detached new ADU as a newly constructed building, an attached ADU or a conversion of unconditioned space as an addition, and a conversion of already-conditioned space as an alteration — and Chapter 10 of the compliance manual states flatly that there are no electric-ready requirements for additions or alterations. One caveat, because the manual is not consistent with itself: Chapter 5 says the §150.0(n) water-heating readiness set applies to newly constructed buildings and to additions where a water heater is installed in the added floor area, and only alterations are out. On an addition that brings its own gas water heater, build the readiness items and ask the plan checker — the cost of the circuit is trivial against a correction. That classification is the same logic that drives the ADU solar question and the garage conversion comparison, which is why a garage conversion escapes both.

On a new detached ADU, §150.0(n) and §150.0(t) through (v) apply whenever gas appliances go in, and §150.0(s) applies at any size — but only where the service is above 125 amps, which is exactly where a lot of small ADUs land on the right side of the line. If the ADU runs off a subpanel from the main house, the CEC says it does not need its own 225-amp panel, provided the main panel carries the 225-amp busbar rating. The ADU page has how the rest of the report comes together.

Solar-ready and EV-ready are separate rules in separate places

These three get lumped together as readiness requirements, and they come from three different code sections with three different scopes.

• PV itself is prescriptive, under §150.1(c)14 — the mandate that puts an array on a new home or a new detached ADU, with the exceptions covered on the ADU solar page.
• Solar-ready, §110.10, is the fallback for homes that skip PV under an exception — but it is mandatory only for single-family residences in subdivisions of ten or more. It reserves a solar zone on the roof, a pathway for conduit, a location for inverters and metering, and a main service panel with a minimum 200-amp busbar and a reserved double-pole breaker space. Because of that subdivision threshold, the CEC has confirmed solar-ready does not reach a newly constructed ADU on an existing lot.
• EV-ready is not in Part 6 at all. It lives in CALGreen, Part 11, at §4.106.4.1: for a new one- or two-family dwelling or townhouse with an attached private garage, a listed raceway of at least trade size 1 for a dedicated 208/240-volt branch circuit, originating at the main service or subpanel and terminating in a listed enclosure near the proposed charger, with panel capacity for a 40-amp 208/240V dedicated circuit and a reserved overcurrent-device space — both marked “EV CAPABLE” under §4.106.4.1.1. A dedicated 40-amp circuit installed up front works instead of the raceway. CALGreen exempts ADUs and JADUs without additional parking facilities. Because it is Part 11, it does not appear on your CF1R, and I do not prepare it — but plan check still looks for it. The City of Sacramento puts it on its own building-codes page in those words: all proposed work must fully comply with the CALGreen mandatory measures for EV charging, as applicable to the project.

What is exempt

• Additions. No BESS-ready, and no electric-ready per Chapter 10 of the compliance manual — with the Chapter 5 caveat above where the addition installs its own gas water heater. That covers attached ADUs and conversions of unconditioned space, and it covers a straightforward room addition.
• Alterations. Same answer — including an equipment change-out in an existing house.
• All-electric new buildings. Install electric appliances and §150.0(n) and (t) through (v) never trigger. A house with no gas or propane for space heating or cooking, and no gas plumbing at the dryer location, has nothing to provision.
• Service of 125 amps or less — out of §150.0(s) only.
• Townhouses — out of §150.0(s) only. The electric-ready subsections still apply.
• A battery already installed — the sole exception to §150.0(s). Per the CEC, a system carrying all the wiring and components for a fully operational battery satisfies the mandatory requirement.
• Buildings with no dwelling unit on a residential lot — out of §150.0(s).

How it shows up on the CF1R — and where it does not

This is the part that catches people out. There is no CF1R electric-ready form. The CEC’s 2025 compliance-document list carries exactly one electric-ready document and it is a Certificate of Installation: CF2R-ELC-01-E, Electric Ready Requirements, filled out by the installing contractor after the work is in. So the readiness items are not something my model proves — they are something the drawings show and the contractor certifies.

What the CF1R does carry is the fact pattern that decides whether any of it applies. On the performance path, the CF1R-PRF-01-E reports the water-heating and space-heating systems, and it includes two summary sections — one for required special features and modeling assumptions, one for features needing ECC field verification. A plan checker reading a gas water heater on the certificate knows to look for the §150.0(n) provisions on the plans; reading a heat pump, they know not to. If a battery was modeled for compliance credit rather than left as readiness, it lands in the special-features section and gets certified separately on CF2R-PVB-02-E. Solar-ready has its own installation forms, CF2R-SRA-01-E and CF2R-SRA-02-E. The forms page maps the whole family.

Practically, readiness does not get rejected on the CF1R — it gets rejected on the electrical sheet and the mandatory-measures sheet. The circuits, the reserved breaker spaces, the labels and the HPWH clearance have to be drawn or noted where a checker can find them. If a comment has already landed, the correction page covers how I turn one around.

Electric-ready is not an all-electric mandate — and most of those are gone

Worth saying flatly, because the two get conflated constantly: nothing in §150.0(n), (s), (t), (u) or (v) prohibits a gas appliance. Each is conditional on installing one. The rules that actually banned gas were local ordinances, and after the Ninth Circuit’s decision in California Restaurant Association v. City of Berkeley the large ones have come apart:

• Sacramento — repealed. The city’s New Building Electrification Ordinance took effect January 1, 2023 and required new buildings of three stories or fewer to be all-electric. Sacramento suspended enforcement in April 2023 following the Berkeley decision, and Ordinance 2025-0031, adopted December 2, 2025, deleted City Code Chapter 15.38 outright effective January 1, 2026. Sacramento now carries no local amendment to Part 6 of any kind.
• San José — codified but inoperative. The gas prohibition at Municipal Code Chapter 17.845 is still on the books, but §17.845.010(E) makes the chapter operative only if the Berkeley case is overturned or disapproved, or the Energy Policy and Conservation Act is modified. The same chapter adds, at §17.845.010(C), that it is in no way to be construed as amending Energy Code requirements under Title 24 Part 6 or Part 1. Separately, San José’s CEC-approved 2022-cycle source-energy reach code at §24.12.600 went away when Ordinance 31257 reenacted Chapter 24.12 on November 18, 2025, and the city is not on the CEC’s 2025 approved list.
• Oakland — suspended, with the paperwork disagreeing. The city’s Building Electrification page states that Oakland has been legally directed to suspend the requirement that all newly constructed buildings be all-electric under Municipal Code 15.37, while its ADU building-criteria checklist, updated 02/2025, still tells applicants a detached ADU must be all-electric with no gas appliances. Two live city documents, opposite answers — confirm with the Bureau of Building before designing around either. Oakland does separately carry codified Energy Code amendments at OMC Chapter 15.06, including an alteration package over $25,000: an electrical panel readiness assessment plus any two measures off a menu largely assembled out of the readiness sections themselves — heat pump water heater ready, heat pump space heater ready, electric cooktop ready, electric clothes dryer ready, battery ready and solar ready, alongside EV-charger ready and attic and wall insulation. Oakland appears on neither of the CEC’s approved local-ordinance lists, so treat that status as a question for the building official rather than a settled one.
• Bakersfield — statewide rule, not a local one. The battery-ready requirements sometimes described locally as Bakersfield’s own are the statewide §150.0(s) mandate — the 60-amp backed-up capacity, the four branch circuits, the 225-amp busbar. They apply in Bakersfield because they apply everywhere in California. Bakersfield appears on the CEC’s approved local energy standards table for neither the 2022 nor the 2025 code, and no Kern County jurisdiction appears on either.

The rule I work to: check the local ordinance status before assuming it, because it is moving, and because a repealed ordinance and a live one look identical on a codifier’s website. Where a city layers something on top, it changes the model, not the readiness set — those stay statewide.

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