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Sadly I’m not surprised by this blatant manipulation of government by the utility companies. I’m building a house about 15mins outside downtown Los Angeles. It

Sadly I’m not surprised by this blatant manipulation of government by the utility companies. I’m building a house about 15mins outside downtown Los Angeles. It’s on empty land on a public street. There is no power to the property. LADWP is requiring us to move/install 3 poles, and upgrade the transformer. Probably around $75k cost to us. Has to be their people doing the work. The Bureau of Street Lighting is also going to require us to move another pole that just has their street light on it with low voltage to it. I’ve been trying so hard to tell them all to get F’d and just install solar and a bunch of batteries instead. But they’ve told me it’s illegal to that (something about freezing to death). Oh and we have to widen the road ourselves too! The whole thing is insane. So they’ve basically created a system where we have no choice but to pay for the utilities failing infrastructure.

knoebber 4y ago
Up here in Northern California quite a few of us live off grid with just solar/batteries. What law says that a grid hookup is required? Is it at the county level?
- rwbt 4y ago
  Most counties require houses to be hooked up to the grid. That's why people who prefer living off grid choose unincorporated lands.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    Most counties in California
    - jjeaff 4y ago
      Most all urban and suburban areas. I think it's usually municipalities that have these requirements.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  Why would you want to live off the grid? Battery solar is more expensive than utility power.
  - azinman2 4y ago
    Until you’re building transmission to your house
    - HyperSane 4y ago
      Don't build a house where there aren't any power lines.
      - BuckyBeaver 4y ago
        He just defeated your argument, so now you're telling everyone to be helpless. Brilliant.
        HyperSane 4y ago
        Dude is complaining about a 100% predictable consequence of his own actions.
        BuckyBeaver 4y ago
        Wrong. Re-read.
  - kcb 4y ago
    $75K could get you an insane solar system.
    - HyperSane 4y ago
      It could also be invested and pay for decades of electricity.
- tguvot 4y ago
  iirc it works through building code. it has some parts related to grid hookup and without it house won't be up to code/pass inspection. Not sure what are implication in this case
  - sowbug 4y ago
    They turn off your power if you don't pay your electric bill. Do they keep charging a hookup fee after they've unhooked you? (I know the answer is yes, because the answer to this kind of question is always yes...)
    - tguvot 4y ago
      they will also send your bills to collections, which will be rather unpleasant, i guess
- a9h74j 4y ago
  The Earthship Community (dirt in tires homes) in New Mexico eventually had to register as a subdivision and put in sewage lines etc, AFAIK.
  - yencabulator 4y ago
    That's crazy because there's houses with septic tanks all over Northern New Mexico -- outside the cities.
masivemunkey 4y ago
You do have the choice to not build your house on that land. Unfortunately the city has to adhere to the mandated codes and the taxpayers should not be forced to pay for the road that now needs to be widened for emergency vehicles.
- worik 4y ago
  That is unhelpful. We nearly all have choices. We can pound our heads on the desk until we bleed. It is about power. The individual building a house has no power. The local government has lots of power. Local governments (and the associated utility companies) here in New Zealand are notorious for dreadfully bad planning and mindless bureaucracy. It sounds like it is the same there
- thereisnospork 4y ago
  >You do have the choice to not build your house on that land In a free society one would think having 'property rights' would enable one to build on owned land and that public infrastructure would be paid out of public funds also known as taxes. If the property taxes aren't adequate to pay for utility infrastructure, that's a legislative problem.
- BuckyBeaver 4y ago
  Smug, infantile nonsense. Then this guy shouldn't have to pay for YOUR street maintenance, YOUR kids' school, or any other public benefit that you use and he doesn't.
ajross 4y ago
> The whole thing is insane. So they’ve basically created a system where we have no choice but to pay for the utilities failing infrastructure. LA doesn't seem to be failing, though. I mean, I get that regulation is unfair, and surely they're doing suboptimal things like every bureaucracy. Yet, the lights are on, the toilets are flushing and the ambulances are arriving. I don't see how demanding the third largest metropolis on the continent switch to a "hook it up or don't, your call" policy is going to do anything but make things much, much worse. Basically: your argument is predicated on the idea that you personally don't need to do these things because everyone else already did and you don't need the incremental advantages. But give everyone that choice, and no streets will be lit, no roads will be paved, and power and sewage will be plumbed only to neighborhoods that will collectively pay for it. That's the way it works in most of the developing world, and it sucks. No freeloading. If you want to live in the urban core of Los Angeles you need to be willing to live like your fellow Angelenos.
- hedora 4y ago
  They are charging him $75K for a transformer and three polls. Around here, PG&E wanted to charge us $10K to remove a poll and move an existing transformer to an existing poll (and would take years to "engineer" the solution and schedule the work, despite it being a few hours of work for one crew). No idea what a residential transformer goes for, but I guarantee it's not a significant fraction of the $75K bill. It is also insane that they are moving polls and not burying the lines.
  - digitalscribe 4y ago
    *pole, or column, or post I thought they were forcing you to run some election polls.
  - danans 4y ago
    Oddly, PG&E charged me $0 to upgrade my service drop from 100A to 200A. I was pretty surprised.
    - BuckyBeaver 4y ago
robomartin 4y ago
> The whole thing is insane. So they’ve basically created a system where we have no choice but to pay for the utilities failing infrastructure. I have done a bunch of construction work in Los Angeles county, including designing and building my own solar array. The only way I can describe the process, rules and the people involved is using words such as "surreal", "brutal", "nonsensical", "damaging", "expensive", "frustrating" and more. I cannot say anything positive about it. Nothing we do in this domain is designed to help people complete projects efficiently and at reasonable a cost. If I can help it, I am never investing another dime in Los Angeles county. Even better, we have been planning a move out of California. This also means taking our businesses and employees out of this place. It's a mess.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  Good bye! Most businesses leaving California report growing losses after they leave. A lot of them fail. As it turns out, the problem was never California. The problem was that they just couldn't cut it in a competitive environment that doesn't coddle business owners.
  - mechanical_bear 4y ago
    Citation needed.
  - robomartin 4y ago
    > As it turns out, the problem was never California. The problem was that they just couldn't cut it in a competitive environment that doesn't coddle business owners. These kinds of comments usually come from people who know nothing about running a non-trivial business. Simple example: Only business owners/operators know about the city of Los Angeles Business Property tax. What is it? Most people would guess it's like the property taxes assessed on homes. Not so. Not even close. This is a tax the city imposes on any business operating in or through the county. If you so much as drive through the county you have to pay it. What do they tax? Your desks, chairs, printers, computers, workbenches, tools, paper shredder, equipment (for example, all the machinery in a CNC shop). They even tax tenant improvements. If you lease a commercial space, paint the walls and perhaps build a few divider walls, they tax that. If you have cubiles, they will take the dividers. Etc. "Business property", for lack of a better description, refers to all objects owned by the business, including things like the garbage cans under every desk. Imagine paying taxes on your desks and computers to the city of Los Angeles FOREVER. Surreal? Yeah. Real? Absolutely. Fucking crazy? Without a doubt. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Where do you think businesses get this city tax money from? Well, they add it to their cost equation and the prices they charge are adjusted incrementally in order to maintain the profit margin they might need to conduct business, R&D, grow, have a financial cushion (you know, pandemics and shit), etc. If costs go up, prices go up. If prices go up, you become less competitive with lower cost-basis geographies. If you are less competitive with other geographies due to your underlying cost structure, buyers will migrate to providers in those regions. That could be nationally or international. When buyers migrate, you struggle to survive, might have to downsize or just move to those locations. In the long run, jobs are lost and businesses leave. Look what they are doing now in CA with regards to rooftop solar. They are going to kill off the entire industry. > Most businesses leaving California report growing losses after they leave. Stop watching CNN brother. You are in the Matrix. This is patently false. I know so many who have left and thrived in places like Arizona and Texas that I have probably lost count. Lots of these have taken valuable talent with them. In our case, most of our business is international or aerospace-related. So long as we are in the US, it really doesn't matter where we are. You can't manufacture shit here in California anyway, the underlying costs are very high. The difference in cost structure for suppliers we have here and in other states is hard to comprehend unless you are ready to understand and accept the fact that imposing high taxes and high regulatory costs on businesses, in the long run, is highly destructive. Most people don't have a good sense of what business looks like under the hood, so, no, I don't expect most to truly understand this. You might want to read this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2021/08/27/businesses-are-fleeing-california-along-with-its-residents-and-president-biden-should-pay-attention/?sh=ed6552223273 https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2021/08/27/business... and this: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/12/15/california-pulls-the-plug-on-rooftop-solar/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/12/15/california-pulls-the-... Watch this: What's Behind California's 'Business Exodus' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dJ2ARP0J-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dJ2ARP0J-E
gamblor956 4y ago
This is how it has always been done in LA, going back to the 1950s at least, except that normally the builders are developers building lots of houses at once. It's very rare in LA for someone to build a house in an otherwise undeveloped area of an incorporated part of LA. So you're basically just arguing against a system that was set up and optimized for the most common case.
ldbooth 4y ago
What's illegal about supplying your own electricity? That can't be real. But for most, likely it'll be more of a pain because batteries require maintenance.
- stonogo 4y ago
  It's not real. OP is just learning why he got the land so cheaply.
- NullPrefix 4y ago
  It's not illegal to supply your own electricity. It's illegal to not have the gov mandated electricity. Once you have that, you can supply your own on top of that.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
Went through this with SCE. Was looking at 300k for 11 poles. If the end of their line is on your land. See if you can put the meter there. We ended up putting the poles in ourselves for 10% the price, so there is hope.

knoebber 4y ago

Up here in Northern California quite a few of us live off grid with just solar/batteries. What law says that a grid hookup is required? Is it at the county level?

rwbt 4y ago
Most counties require houses to be hooked up to the grid. That's why people who prefer living off grid choose unincorporated lands.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Most counties in California
  - jjeaff 4y ago
    Most all urban and suburban areas. I think it's usually municipalities that have these requirements.
HyperSane 4y ago
Why would you want to live off the grid? Battery solar is more expensive than utility power.
- azinman2 4y ago
  Until you’re building transmission to your house
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    Don't build a house where there aren't any power lines.
    - BuckyBeaver 4y ago
      He just defeated your argument, so now you're telling everyone to be helpless. Brilliant.
      - HyperSane 4y ago
        Dude is complaining about a 100% predictable consequence of his own actions.
        BuckyBeaver 4y ago
        Wrong. Re-read.
- kcb 4y ago
  $75K could get you an insane solar system.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    It could also be invested and pay for decades of electricity.
tguvot 4y ago
iirc it works through building code. it has some parts related to grid hookup and without it house won't be up to code/pass inspection. Not sure what are implication in this case
- sowbug 4y ago
  They turn off your power if you don't pay your electric bill. Do they keep charging a hookup fee after they've unhooked you? (I know the answer is yes, because the answer to this kind of question is always yes...)
  - tguvot 4y ago
    they will also send your bills to collections, which will be rather unpleasant, i guess
a9h74j 4y ago
The Earthship Community (dirt in tires homes) in New Mexico eventually had to register as a subdivision and put in sewage lines etc, AFAIK.
- yencabulator 4y ago
  That's crazy because there's houses with septic tanks all over Northern New Mexico -- outside the cities.

masivemunkey 4y ago

You do have the choice to not build your house on that land. Unfortunately the city has to adhere to the mandated codes and the taxpayers should not be forced to pay for the road that now needs to be widened for emergency vehicles.

worik 4y ago
That is unhelpful. We nearly all have choices. We can pound our heads on the desk until we bleed. It is about power. The individual building a house has no power. The local government has lots of power. Local governments (and the associated utility companies) here in New Zealand are notorious for dreadfully bad planning and mindless bureaucracy. It sounds like it is the same there
thereisnospork 4y ago
>You do have the choice to not build your house on that land In a free society one would think having 'property rights' would enable one to build on owned land and that public infrastructure would be paid out of public funds also known as taxes. If the property taxes aren't adequate to pay for utility infrastructure, that's a legislative problem.
BuckyBeaver 4y ago
Smug, infantile nonsense. Then this guy shouldn't have to pay for YOUR street maintenance, YOUR kids' school, or any other public benefit that you use and he doesn't.

ajross 4y ago

> The whole thing is insane. So they’ve basically created a system where we have no choice but to pay for the utilities failing infrastructure. LA doesn't seem to be failing, though. I mean, I get that regulation is unfair, and surely they're doing suboptimal things like every bureaucracy. Yet, the lights are on, the toilets are flushing and the ambulances are arriving. I don't see how demanding the third largest metropolis on the continent switch to a "hook it up or don't, your call" policy is going to do anything but make things much, much worse. Basically: your argument is predicated on the idea that you personally don't need to do these things because everyone else already did and you don't need the incremental advantages. But give everyone that choice, and no streets will be lit, no roads will be paved, and power and sewage will be plumbed only to neighborhoods that will collectively pay for it. That's the way it works in most of the developing world, and it sucks. No freeloading. If you want to live in the urban core of Los Angeles you need to be willing to live like your fellow Angelenos.

hedora 4y ago
They are charging him $75K for a transformer and three polls. Around here, PG&E wanted to charge us $10K to remove a poll and move an existing transformer to an existing poll (and would take years to "engineer" the solution and schedule the work, despite it being a few hours of work for one crew). No idea what a residential transformer goes for, but I guarantee it's not a significant fraction of the $75K bill. It is also insane that they are moving polls and not burying the lines.
- digitalscribe 4y ago
  *pole, or column, or post I thought they were forcing you to run some election polls.
- danans 4y ago
  Oddly, PG&E charged me $0 to upgrade my service drop from 100A to 200A. I was pretty surprised.
  - BuckyBeaver 4y ago

robomartin 4y ago

> The whole thing is insane. So they’ve basically created a system where we have no choice but to pay for the utilities failing infrastructure. I have done a bunch of construction work in Los Angeles county, including designing and building my own solar array. The only way I can describe the process, rules and the people involved is using words such as "surreal", "brutal", "nonsensical", "damaging", "expensive", "frustrating" and more. I cannot say anything positive about it. Nothing we do in this domain is designed to help people complete projects efficiently and at reasonable a cost. If I can help it, I am never investing another dime in Los Angeles county. Even better, we have been planning a move out of California. This also means taking our businesses and employees out of this place. It's a mess.

gamblor956 4y ago
Good bye! Most businesses leaving California report growing losses after they leave. A lot of them fail. As it turns out, the problem was never California. The problem was that they just couldn't cut it in a competitive environment that doesn't coddle business owners.
- mechanical_bear 4y ago
  Citation needed.
- robomartin 4y ago
  > As it turns out, the problem was never California. The problem was that they just couldn't cut it in a competitive environment that doesn't coddle business owners. These kinds of comments usually come from people who know nothing about running a non-trivial business. Simple example: Only business owners/operators know about the city of Los Angeles Business Property tax. What is it? Most people would guess it's like the property taxes assessed on homes. Not so. Not even close. This is a tax the city imposes on any business operating in or through the county. If you so much as drive through the county you have to pay it. What do they tax? Your desks, chairs, printers, computers, workbenches, tools, paper shredder, equipment (for example, all the machinery in a CNC shop). They even tax tenant improvements. If you lease a commercial space, paint the walls and perhaps build a few divider walls, they tax that. If you have cubiles, they will take the dividers. Etc. "Business property", for lack of a better description, refers to all objects owned by the business, including things like the garbage cans under every desk. Imagine paying taxes on your desks and computers to the city of Los Angeles FOREVER. Surreal? Yeah. Real? Absolutely. Fucking crazy? Without a doubt. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Where do you think businesses get this city tax money from? Well, they add it to their cost equation and the prices they charge are adjusted incrementally in order to maintain the profit margin they might need to conduct business, R&D, grow, have a financial cushion (you know, pandemics and shit), etc. If costs go up, prices go up. If prices go up, you become less competitive with lower cost-basis geographies. If you are less competitive with other geographies due to your underlying cost structure, buyers will migrate to providers in those regions. That could be nationally or international. When buyers migrate, you struggle to survive, might have to downsize or just move to those locations. In the long run, jobs are lost and businesses leave. Look what they are doing now in CA with regards to rooftop solar. They are going to kill off the entire industry. > Most businesses leaving California report growing losses after they leave. Stop watching CNN brother. You are in the Matrix. This is patently false. I know so many who have left and thrived in places like Arizona and Texas that I have probably lost count. Lots of these have taken valuable talent with them. In our case, most of our business is international or aerospace-related. So long as we are in the US, it really doesn't matter where we are. You can't manufacture shit here in California anyway, the underlying costs are very high. The difference in cost structure for suppliers we have here and in other states is hard to comprehend unless you are ready to understand and accept the fact that imposing high taxes and high regulatory costs on businesses, in the long run, is highly destructive. Most people don't have a good sense of what business looks like under the hood, so, no, I don't expect most to truly understand this. You might want to read this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2021/08/27/businesses-are-fleeing-california-along-with-its-residents-and-president-biden-should-pay-attention/?sh=ed6552223273 https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2021/08/27/business... and this: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/12/15/california-pulls-the-plug-on-rooftop-solar/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/12/15/california-pulls-the-... Watch this: What's Behind California's 'Business Exodus' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dJ2ARP0J-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dJ2ARP0J-E

gamblor956 4y ago

This is how it has always been done in LA, going back to the 1950s at least, except that normally the builders are developers building lots of houses at once. It's very rare in LA for someone to build a house in an otherwise undeveloped area of an incorporated part of LA. So you're basically just arguing against a system that was set up and optimized for the most common case.

ldbooth 4y ago

What's illegal about supplying your own electricity? That can't be real. But for most, likely it'll be more of a pain because batteries require maintenance.

stonogo 4y ago
It's not real. OP is just learning why he got the land so cheaply.
NullPrefix 4y ago
It's not illegal to supply your own electricity. It's illegal to not have the gov mandated electricity. Once you have that, you can supply your own on top of that.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

Went through this with SCE. Was looking at 300k for 11 poles. If the end of their line is on your land. See if you can put the meter there. We ended up putting the poles in ourselves for 10% the price, so there is hope.