Solar Panel Installation in Pacific Palisades, CA
Solar, battery storage and EV charging for Palisades homes and rebuilds — designed
around the Energy Code requirements your plan set has to satisfy, and the LADWP program that makes
the numbers work here.
LA Solar Group has installed solar across Los Angeles County since 2010, from our yard at
8484 San Fernando Road in Sun Valley. Pacific Palisades is a different job from anywhere else we
work right now. If you are rebuilding, solar is not an upgrade you decide on later — for new
construction it is a code requirement that belongs in the plan set from the start, and the battery
decision changes how much of it you have to install. If you are not rebuilding, you are still on
LADWP, still in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, and still permitting through LADBS.
- Energy Code solar sizing built into the rebuild plan set, not bolted on afterward
- LADWP net metering and interconnection handled end to end
- Battery storage sized for real outage backup, not just code compliance
- Level 2 EV chargers and main-panel sizing done once, during the rebuild
- Chapter 7A-compliant detailing and wind-rated mounting for canyon and bluff exposure
Get a Pacific Palisades solar quote
Rebuilding? Send us the plan set. We size the array to the Energy Code and to your
actual load.
On a new build, solar is not optional — and a battery shrinks the array you owe
The two Energy Code facts that change your plan set
1. Solar PV is prescriptively required on newly constructed single-family homes.
Buildings whose permit applications are filed on or after January 1, 2023 comply with the 2022
Energy Code, which requires a solar PV system on new single-family construction. A small number of
exceptions can exclude a building or reduce the required size — for example where the solar access
roof area is under 80 contiguous square feet, or where snow load requirements cannot be met.
2. A battery reduces the solar you are required to install.
Where a battery storage system is installed alongside the array, the PV size required by the Energy
Code’s sizing equation may be reduced by 25 percent. And if you are not installing a
battery, the home still has to meet mandatory battery-ready requirements so the infrastructure is
there for a cost-effective install later.
Read those two together and the sequencing matters. A rebuild that plans for storage from the
beginning installs less required PV, gets real outage backup, and avoids paying twice to open up the
same walls. A rebuild that treats solar as a line item to sort out after framing usually ends up with
a compliance-minimum array, battery-ready conduit nobody ever uses, and a second mobilisation later.
Bring us in during design. The array size, the inverter, the storage location, the
main panel and the EV circuit are all decisions your architect is making anyway. Making them with the
actual production numbers in front of you costs nothing extra at that stage.
Source: California Energy Commission — Solar PV, Solar Ready, Battery Energy Storage requirements.
Whether a specific rebuild is treated as new construction is confirmed by the building official during
plan check; we design to what your plan check path actually requires.
The City has built a separate, faster path for Palisades rebuilds
Los Angeles has stood up dedicated support centres and executive orders specifically for fire
rebuilding. Both centres put the Department of Building and Safety, the Bureau of Engineering, the
Fire Department, City Planning and LADWP representatives under one roof — which
matters for solar, because the building permit and the utility interconnection are two separate
tracks that both have to land.
| Support centre | Address | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Palisades Inspections and Permitting Support Center | 16925 Marquez Avenue Pacific Palisades, CA 90272 |
9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday |
| City of Los Angeles One-Stop Rebuilding Center | 1828 Sawtelle Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90025 |
9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday |
The two rebuild paths, and why your solar design depends on which one you are on
EO1 — “Like for Like” up to 110%
Expedites rebuilding of homes damaged or destroyed in the wildfires by requiring City
departments to review complete applications within 30 days and issue permit
clearances within 5 days, waiving certain environmental and hearing requirements,
and allowing temporary housing during construction. It covers like-for-like projects within 110%
of the original home’s footprint and height, and extends to primary residences, accessory
structures and ADUs.
EO8 — beyond like-for-like, zoning compliant
Allows non-like-for-like single-family residential projects that comply with zoning to bypass
local Coastal Act and CEQA reviews while keeping streamlined environmental protections. It
explicitly includes accessory structures and necessary infrastructure, and reinforces height
limits, unit replacement and bluff setbacks. This is the path that matters for the bluff-side and
coastal-zone parcels in the Palisades.
The City has also eliminated roughly 70% of the clearances previously required for
single-family rebuild permits. Remaining clearances under EO1 and EO8 still include Bureau of
Engineering items such as sewer availability, roof and site drainage, driveway and curb permits, and
lateral support where the work affects the public right of way.
Roof and site drainage clearance is the one worth flagging for a solar customer: it
is a roof-related clearance, and it is easier to satisfy when the array layout is already on the
drawings rather than added by revision after the roof plan is approved.
Source: City of Los Angeles — LA Strong: Return & Rebuild, Rebuilding
and LA Emergency Management Department — Palisades Rebuild Permit Center.
Executive orders and program terms change; confirm current requirements with the City.
Pacific Palisades is LADWP. NEM 3.0 does not apply to you.
California’s net billing tariff — the rule everyone calls NEM 3.0 — came from a California Public
Utilities Commission decision, and the CPUC regulates investor-owned utilities: PG&E, Southern
California Edison and SDG&E. Pacific Palisades is inside the City of Los Angeles, served by LADWP,
a municipal utility the CPUC does not regulate. LADWP has not adopted the net billing tariff.
Under LADWP’s published Net Energy Metering rider, when your generation exceeds what LADWP supplies
over a billing period, the credit for the energy received is calculated using the applicable Rate
Schedule energy pricing — your own retail energy rate. Credit balances carry forward onto each
subsequent bill until they are used up.
Up to 1 MW
LADWP’s NEM rider covers customer-owned, permanently installed solar, wind or hybrid generating
facilities up to one megawatt on the customer’s own premises, operating in parallel with the grid
and primarily offsetting the customer’s own use.
Over 10 kW needs an agreement
Systems above 10 kW nameplate capacity require a signed Solar-Powered Customer Generation
Interconnection Agreement with LADWP. New Palisades builds frequently land above that line once
you add a battery and an EV circuit to the load calculation.
Credits are not cash
Credit balances offset later bills, but they are not paid out. If a balance remains when the
account is closed, LADWP adjusts it to zero. Systems should be designed against your own projected
use, not to bank a refund.
Source: LADWP Net Energy Metering Rider, published electric rates.
Rebuilding? Talk to us during design, not after framing
Battery storage in the Palisades: three separate reasons, only one of them about money
It reduces required PV on a new build
Installing storage alongside the array lets the Energy Code’s required PV size be reduced by
25 percent. On a constrained roof — and Palisades roofs are frequently constrained by fire access
pathways and by the roof plan the architect wants — that is the difference between a layout that
works and one that does not.
Solar alone gives you nothing in an outage
A grid-tied array disconnects during a power outage, by design, for the safety of line crews.
Without storage your panels produce nothing on the day the grid is down. In this specific
community, that is not a theoretical scenario worth pricing — it is the scenario.
Battery-ready is mandatory anyway
If you skip storage on a new build, the home still has to meet mandatory battery-ready
requirements — the infrastructure has to be there. You are paying for part of the pathway
regardless. The question is whether you finish it now at construction cost or later at retrofit
cost.
Whole-home backup or critical loads?
The decision most proposals skip. Backing up an entire house takes considerably more storage than
backing up a critical-loads subpanel covering the refrigerator, well pump, gate, internet, a few
circuits of lighting and any medical equipment. During a rebuild the critical-loads subpanel is cheap
to install because the walls are already open. We price both so you can see the real difference
instead of being defaulted into the larger one.
LADWP also runs a Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) that provides financial
incentives toward solar and battery storage for qualified residential customers. Eligibility rules are
specific, and we check whether your property actually qualifies before it appears in a proposal.
We install Tesla Powerwall and other battery platforms. The right one depends on your
backup load, your panel and your available wall or pad space — not on which brand is being pushed this
quarter.
EV charging: do it during the rebuild, and read the LADWP rebate rules first
LADWP runs a Residential EV Charger Rebate Program open to account holders with an active
residential electric meter. The eligibility conditions are where homeowners get caught out, and two of
them are far cheaper to satisfy while the house is under construction:
Separate meter, on a TOU rate
To qualify, the charger must be separately metered from your main meter, and
that EV meter has to be on a Time-of-Use rate. Running a second meter into a finished house is a
retrofit. Running it into a house you are already building is a line on the electrical plan.
Licensed electrician required
Installation costs are only claimable if the work was performed by a licensed electrician.
Chargers that are resold, refurbished, used, rebuilt, received through a warranty claim, gifted or
won as a prize are not eligible at all.
Six-month application window
The rebate application has to be submitted within six months of the installation
date. On a long rebuild that clock is easy to miss, so we flag it at commissioning rather
than leaving it to you to remember.
There is a separate LADWP program for the vehicle: a Used Electric Vehicle Rebate of up to $1,500
for customers whose primary residence is served by LADWP, rising to up to $4,000 for households
enrolled in EZ-SAVE or Lifeline at the time of purchase, with a 12-month application window from the
purchase date.
Size the service once
Solar, a battery, a Level 2 charger, a separate EV meter and an all-electric kitchen all land on the
same service. A rebuild is the one moment where sizing the main service for everything you will ever
add costs almost nothing extra. Undersizing it is the single most expensive avoidable mistake we see on
new construction.
Source: LADWP Electric Vehicles programs and rebates.
Amounts and rules change — confirm current terms with LADWP.
The Palisades is inside a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone
When CAL FIRE released its recommended fire hazard severity zone maps for Los Angeles on
March 24, 2025, the Palisades — along with Bel Air, Brentwood and essentially the
whole spine of the Santa Monica Mountains — remained inside a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.
Chapter 7A assemblies
New construction and exterior renovation in a VHFHSZ has to use Chapter 7A-compliant materials:
Class A fire-rated roofing, enclosed eave construction, ember-resistant vents, and non-combustible
exterior detailing. Your roof assembly is part of your solar mounting substrate, so the two specs
have to agree.
Fire access pathways
The Fire Department enforces roof access pathways and ridge setbacks around rooftop arrays. On
a roof plan that is already committed, these setbacks reduce usable panel area — which is exactly
why array layout belongs on the drawings during design, not after.
Wind and bluff exposure
Castellammare, the bluff-side streets and the canyon rims see wind loads a sheltered inland roof
never sees. Racking has to be engineered for the actual exposure category, with a different
attachment count and spec.
Rapid shutdown and labelling
Rooftop PV has to include compliant rapid-shutdown equipment and labelling so responders can
de-energise the array from ground level. It is a code item everywhere, but it gets inspected
closely in a very high fire hazard zone.
Source: Los Angeles GeoHub — Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones.
We check your specific parcel against the current map before designing.
Five Palisades, five different solar problems
The Alphabet Streets
Compact lots, tight side yards, and neighbours close enough that equipment placement and
inverter noise are genuine design constraints. On rebuilds, roof area is the binding constraint on
array size far more often than budget is.
Huntington Palisades
Larger, flatter lots and bigger traditional roofs. More usable roof plane, but also more
architectural sensitivity about what is visible from the street. This is where a good roof plan and
a good array layout have to be drawn together.
Marquez Knolls & the Highlands
Elevated, hillside, real terrain shading and real wind exposure. Terrain shading is modelled
differently from tree shading, and getting that wrong is the most common cause of a system that
underproduces its estimate.
Castellammare & the bluffs
Coastal-zone parcels with bluff setback rules, steep access and marine exposure. EO8’s coastal
provisions matter most here, and hardware selection has to account for a salt-air environment.
Rustic and Temescal Canyons
Canyon floor and canyon wall properties with heavy tree canopy, narrow access roads and the
strongest case for battery backup in the community. Material delivery and staging get planned before
the crew is scheduled, not on the morning of day one.
What these jobs actually cost
Everyone else says “free estimates.” We publish real systems with real numbers.
Neighborhood · roof type · system size (kW) · panel count and wattage · battery model and count ·
net price the customer paid · days on roof · contract-to-PTO days · before and
after photos. A new-construction job with solar + storage + EV charger leads best on this page.
Same fields. A non-rebuild Palisades or Westside retrofit shows you serve both audiences.
Same fields. A whole-home or critical-loads backup install demonstrates the outage argument in
practice rather than in theory.
Use the same format as the Beverly Hills page. Until real Palisades jobs exist, a
comparable Westside or hillside job is fine — label it accurately as such.
★★★★★
What Westside homeowners say
Paste 3 real Google reviews here — reviewer name, star rating, and the quote as written.
Do not add
AggregateRating or Review schema until these are real reviews;fabricated review markup is a manual-action risk.
How to compare solar bids on a Palisades rebuild
Ask whether they sized to the Energy Code or to your bill
These are two different numbers. A compliance-minimum array satisfies plan check and may still
leave you buying power. Ask to see both figures side by side and choose deliberately.
Ask whether their savings model assumed NEM 3.0
If it did, they modelled you as an Edison customer. You are on LADWP. That error changes the
recommended system size and the battery recommendation.
Ask when they want to be involved
A company that says “call us when the roof is on” is telling you they will not be in the plan
set. On new construction that costs you money in redesign, revisions and a second mobilisation.
Where we work
Our yard, and solar projects across the Palisades and the Westside.
Build a My Map at google.com/mymaps with a pin on 8484 San Fernando Rd and pins on real completed
installs across the Palisades and Westside, then paste the embed iframe here.
Request a Pacific Palisades solar quote
Pacific Palisades solar questions
Is solar required on a new home in Pacific Palisades?
A solar PV system is prescriptively required for newly constructed single-family buildings under
California’s 2022 Energy Code, which applies to buildings whose permit applications are filed on or
after January 1, 2023. A limited set of exceptions can exclude a building or reduce the required
size, including where the solar access roof area is less than 80 contiguous square feet. Whether a
particular rebuild is treated as new construction is confirmed by the building official during plan
check.
Does adding a battery reduce how much solar I have to install?
Yes. Under the 2022 Energy Code, where a battery storage system is installed with the array, the
PV size required by the Code’s sizing equation may be reduced by 25 percent. Separately, newly
constructed single-family homes that do not install battery storage must still meet mandatory
battery-ready requirements so the infrastructure exists for a cost-effective installation later.
Who supplies electricity in Pacific Palisades, and does NEM 3.0 apply?
Pacific Palisades is inside the City of Los Angeles and served by LADWP. NEM 3.0 — the net
billing tariff — came from a California Public Utilities Commission decision governing investor-owned
utilities: PG&E, Southern California Edison and SDG&E. LADWP is a municipal utility that the
CPUC does not regulate and has not adopted the net billing tariff, so LADWP customers are on LADWP’s
own Net Energy Metering rider.
How does LADWP credit exported solar?
Under LADWP’s published Net Energy Metering rider, if generation exceeds what LADWP supplies over
a billing period, the credit for the energy received is calculated using the applicable Rate Schedule
energy pricing, and any credit balance is applied to subsequent bills until used up. Credit balances
are not paid out in cash; a balance remaining when the account closes is adjusted to zero.
Where do I go for Palisades rebuild permits?
The Palisades Inspections and Permitting Support Center at 16925 Marquez Avenue, Pacific
Palisades, CA 90272, open 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, or the City of Los Angeles
One-Stop Rebuilding Center at 1828 Sawtelle Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025, with the same hours. Both
centres have representatives from LADBS, the Bureau of Engineering, LAFD, City Planning and LADWP on
site.
What is the difference between EO1 and EO8?
EO1 covers “like for like” rebuilds within 110% of the original home’s footprint and height,
requiring City departments to review complete applications within 30 days and issue permit clearances
within 5 days, and allowing temporary housing during construction. EO8 allows non-like-for-like
single-family projects that comply with zoning to bypass local Coastal Act and CEQA reviews while
retaining streamlined environmental protections, and reinforces height limits, unit replacement and
bluff setbacks.
Do I still need a battery if my solar system is brand new?
For outage backup, yes. A grid-tied array disconnects during a power outage by design, for the
safety of line crews, so a system without storage produces nothing while the grid is down regardless
of how new it is. LADWP also runs a Self-Generation Incentive Program providing incentives toward
solar and storage for qualified residential customers.
Can I get a rebate for a home EV charger in Pacific Palisades?
LADWP runs a Residential EV Charger Rebate Program for account holders with an active residential
electric meter. The charger must be separately metered from the main meter with that EV meter on a
Time-of-Use rate, installation costs are only claimable when the work is done by a licensed
electrician, and the application must be submitted within six months of installation. Resold,
refurbished, used, rebuilt, warranty-replacement, gifted and prize-won chargers are not eligible.
Is Pacific Palisades in a fire hazard zone?
Yes. CAL FIRE’s recommended maps released on March 24, 2025 kept the Palisades, along with Bel
Air, Brentwood and the spine of the Santa Monica Mountains, inside a Very High Fire Hazard Severity
Zone. Construction there must use Chapter 7A-compliant assemblies including Class A fire-rated
roofing, enclosed eaves and ember-resistant vents, and rooftop arrays must maintain fire-department
access pathways.
Related services and nearby areas
Services
Residential solar installation
Battery storage & Powerwall
EV charger installation
Solar-ready roofing
Nearby areas
Swap placeholder URLs for real slugs on la-solargroup.com
before publishing.
Still have questions?
Talk to a designer who has permitted with LADBS and interconnected with LADWP.
