TITLE 24 COMPLIANCE AND CALIFORNIA ENERGY CODE.
ENGINEERED INTO THE PERMIT SET.

Title 24 compliance and the California Energy Code

Part 6 of Title 24, the Building Energy Efficiency Standards, is California's energy code: it sets the efficiency requirements for new construction, additions, and alterations, residential and nonresidential alike. The California Energy Commission updates the Energy Code on a three-year cycle, and a project complies with the code in effect when it is submitted for permit; the 2025 Energy Code took effect on January 1, 2026.

Compliance can be shown prescriptively, by meeting each measure directly, or through the performance approach, where approved software demonstrates the design performs as well as the prescriptive baseline. Mandatory measures apply either way.

SLC runs Title 24 compliance inside the electrical design rather than treating it as a downstream paperwork step. The engineer sizing the service and laying out the panels is the same engineer carrying the lighting power, controls, and EV-readiness requirements through the drawings, so the permit set reaches the building department already aligned with the code it will be checked against.

Title 24 calculations, reports, and compliance documentation

A Title 24 report is the documentation showing a building design complies with Part 6: the energy calculations, the compliance forms, and the certificates of compliance filed with the permit application, an NRCC for nonresidential projects and a CF1R for residential. Plan checkers read these forms first, and a permit application that adds or changes a regulated system is incomplete without them.

SLC prepares Title 24 energy calculations and compliance documentation as part of the permit sets it engineers: lighting power density, mandatory controls, receptacle and EV-capable provisions, and the registered certificates the jurisdiction expects, working from the same reference material plan checkers use, including Energy Code Ace, the utility-funded statewide support center for the Energy Code.

Much of the Title 24 market is mail-order: a report generated from plans by a service that will never see the project again. That works until plan check raises a correction the report's author cannot answer. At SLC, the engineer who ran the calculations is the licensed Electrical Engineer of Record who signed the permit set, so corrections come back to one desk and get answered by the person who made the design decisions the numbers describe.

CALGreen and Title 24 Part 11

CALGreen, Part 11 of Title 24, is the California Green Building Standards Code: mandatory green-building requirements that apply alongside the energy code, covering site development, water efficiency, material conservation, and the electric-vehicle infrastructure provisions that make new parking ready for chargers.

For commercial and multifamily projects, CALGreen's most consequential electrical requirement is EV parking: a share of new spaces must be built EV-capable, with raceway routed and panel capacity reserved for future chargers, and each code cycle has pushed those percentages higher. EV-capable means the conduit and capacity are in place; EV-ready adds the circuit and outlet; installed equipment completes the ladder. SLC engineers those provisions as part of the site's EV charging infrastructure scope, sized against the same service and load calculations as the rest of the building, so the capacity CALGreen reserves on paper is capacity the site can actually deliver.

Title 24 lighting and electrical requirements

Title 24's lighting requirements set maximum lighting power, mandatory controls such as occupancy sensors and daylighting, and limits on outdoor lighting, all documented in the compliance forms filed with the permit. For electrical scope, this is where the energy code bites hardest.

SLC carries those requirements through the lighting and controls design: indoor and outdoor lighting power allowances checked against the actual fixture schedule, controls specified where the code requires them, and outdoor lighting that holds the energy code and the local ordinance at the same time. For projects that need full photometric documentation, the photometric plans and site lighting design run under the same Engineer of Record, so the lighting compliance forms and the lighting design they describe never disagree.

Plan check, corrections, and code review across four states

Plan check is the building department's review of a permit application against the codes in effect, and corrections are the comment rounds a project must clear before the permit is issued. On most projects, compliance lives or dies here, not in the calculation software.

SLC answers plan-check corrections on the sets it engineers, with the answers coming from the engineer who signed the original drawings. Title 24 is California law, and the deepest demand for it is here; projects in OR, NV, and WA run on their own state energy codes, which SLC designs to as a licensed engineer in each state, and when an out-of-state jurisdiction's requirements mirror California's, the same compliance approach carries over.

Code review also stands alone: AHJ-facing reviews of electrical designs across CA, OR, NV, and WA, and corrections support on projects where the original designer is no longer available. The work product is the same either way: a permit set that clears plan check because the code questions were answered in the design, before submission.