California Cultivation Facility Energy: Title 24 Grow Lighting, Demand Charges, and CCA Rates

What drives the load in a California grow

Three loads set the bill in any indoor or mixed-light cultivation facility: horticultural lighting, the cooling that removes the heat those lights make, and the dehumidification that removes the water the plants transpire. CO2 enrichment, fans, pumps, and irrigation are real but secondary. In California, the mix shifts by region because the state contains several climates.

NOAA's 1991-2020 normals put California at 929 cooling degree days and 2,814 heating degree days per year as a statewide average [noaa-cag-california]. That average is close to meaningless for a specific site. A warehouse grow in Fresno, Bakersfield, or the Inland Empire sees a long, dry cooling season, so sensible cooling dominates and the chillers or rooftop units run near design capacity from May through September. A greenhouse or mixed-light operation in Humboldt, Mendocino, Santa Cruz, or Monterey lives under the marine layer, where outdoor air is mild but humid for much of the year; there, dehumidification rather than cooling is the load you fight. Mountain and foothill sites in Trinity, Nevada, and Siskiyou counties carry real heating loads in winter, and a greenhouse there may spend more on propane or electric heat than on cooling.

The practical rule: size and schedule the HVAC for your county, not for the state. Our HVAC sizing guide walks through the latent versus sensible split.

What Title 24 requires of grow lighting and dehumidifiers

California is the only cannabis state whose building energy code speaks directly to grow rooms. The 2022 Title 24 Part 6 controlled environment horticulture (CEH) measure, effective for permits from January 1, 2023, applies to indoor and greenhouse spaces with more than 40 kW of total connected horticultural lighting [title24-ceh]. Inside that threshold:

Requirement	Indoor CEH	Greenhouse CEH
Minimum luminaire photosynthetic photon efficacy (PPE)	1.9 umol/J	1.7 umol/J
Lighting controls	Time-switch and multilevel controls	Time-switch and multilevel controls
Metering	Aggregate horticultural lighting load must be monitorable	Same
Dehumidification	Stand-alone units of at least 1.77 L/kWh integrated energy factor (8.0 cu ft or smaller) or 2.41 L/kWh (larger), or integrated HVAC or chilled-water heat recovery covering at least 75 percent of annual reheat, or desiccant systems for 50 F dew point designs	Applies to conditioned greenhouse spaces per the measure

Source for every row: the CASE measure summary [title24-ceh].

Two consequences matter for energy planning. First, double-ended HPS fixtures typically test below the indoor floor, so any permitted flower-room build in California is effectively an LED build. That is not bad news for the bill; see LED versus HPS for the wattage math. Second, the dehumidification standard pushes larger facilities toward heat-recovery HVAC that reuses compressor heat for reheat instead of paying for cooling and then paying again for heat. Those systems cost more up front and draw less through the summer.

The 2025 Energy Code carries the CEH provisions forward for permits filed on or after January 1, 2026, and puts more weight on acceptance testing of lighting controls [title24-2025-ceh]. We have not compared the two code texts section by section; before you spec fixtures for a 2026 permit, confirm current PPE and dehumidifier thresholds with the California Energy Commission or your Title 24 consultant.

Which delivery schedule a grow lands in

Every California grow on PG&E, SCE, or SDG&E is billed for delivery on a schedule chosen by its maximum demand, whether its generation comes from the utility, a CCA, or a Direct Access supplier. Placement is automatic and based on metered kW.

Utility	Smallest accounts	Small-to-medium	Medium-to-large	Largest loads
PG&E	B-1 or B-6, no demand charge [pge-tariffs]	B-10: new accounts expected at 75 to 499 kW [pge-sched-b10]	B-19: mandatory once demand exceeds 499 kW for three consecutive months in a 12-month period [pge-sched-b19]	B-20: 1,000 kW and above [pge-tariffs]
SCE	TOU-GS-1: 20 kW or less [sce-rate-options-2025]	TOU-GS-2: above 20 kW to below 200 kW [sce-rate-options-2025]	TOU-GS-3: 200 to 500 kW [sce-rate-options-2025]	TOU-8: regularly above 500 kW [sce-rate-options-2025]
SDG&E	TOU-A family under 20 kW, no demand charge [sdge-business-pricing]	AL-TOU, AL-TOU2, TOU-M, DG-R above 20 kW, with non-coincident and on-peak demand charges [sdge-business-pricing]	Same family	Same family

A rough sizing rule for indoor flower: assume LED canopies run about 35 to 45 W per square foot of lighting alone, and that total facility demand lands around 1.6 to 2 times the lighting load once HVAC and dehumidification are counted. These are design rules of thumb, not measured facts; verify against your own one-line diagram. By that rule a 5,000 square foot flowering canopy is a 300 to 450 kW facility, which is TOU-GS-3 at SCE and B-10 heading toward B-19 at PG&E. A 15,000 square foot canopy is a B-19 or TOU-8 account.

On PG&E's B-19, peak is 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm every day including weekends, summer partial-peak runs 2:00 to 4:00 pm and 9:00 to 11:00 pm, and March through May have a super off-peak window from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm [pge-sched-b19]. SCE's general service and agricultural schedules put on-peak at 4:00 to 9:00 pm on weekdays [sce-rate-options-2025], and SDG&E's business plans use 4:00 to 9:00 pm as well [sdge-business-pricing]. Because all three utilities agree on the evening window, the photoperiod decision is the same statewide: if your 12-hour flower cycle can run lights-off from 4 to 9 pm, do it.

Demand charges and the ratchet question

Demand-metered schedules in California bill two kinds of demand charge. A maximum demand charge (PG&E) or facilities-related demand charge (SCE) is assessed on your highest 15-minute interval in the month at any hour. A peak-period demand charge (PG&E) or time-related demand charge (SCE) is assessed on your highest interval within the on-peak window [pge-sched-b19] [sce-rate-options-2025]. SDG&E splits the same idea into non-coincident and on-peak demand [sdge-business-pricing].

The good news for growers is that the standard business schedules at California's big three do not carry the 11-month demand ratchets common in the Midwest and Southeast; your billed demand is the demand you set that month. The catch is that the schedule assignment itself behaves like a ratchet. PG&E moves you from B-10 to B-19 after three consecutive months above 499 kW and does not move you back down until demand has failed to exceed 499 kW for twelve consecutive months [pge-sched-b10] [pge-sched-b19]. One summer of running every room at once can hold you on a larger-customer schedule for a year.

Agricultural schedules are the other placement question. PG&E serves a customer on an AG schedule when 70 percent or more of the meter's energy use is for agricultural end uses [pge-sched-b19]. SCE's TOU-PA-2 (below 200 kW) and TOU-PA-3 (200 to 500 kW) are the agricultural and pumping equivalents [sce-rate-options-2025]. Whether cultivation qualifies is decided per meter; a grow that shares a meter with a trim room, packaging line, and offices usually fails the 70 percent test.

A worked cost example on the California rate

Assume a 10,000 square foot indoor flowering canopy in the Central Valley on PG&E, with 40 W per square foot of LED lighting (400 kW connected), lights on 12 hours a day, and HVAC plus dehumidification averaging 60 percent of lighting load across the day. All of these are assumptions you should replace with your own numbers.

• Lighting energy: 400 kW x 12 h x 30 days = 144,000 kWh per month.
• HVAC and dehumidification: 400 kW x 0.60 x 24 h x 30 days = 172,800 kWh per month.
• Total: about 316,800 kWh per month.

At the June 2026 statewide average commercial price of 27.33 cents per kWh, that is about $86,600 per month, or roughly $1.04 million per year, before any demand-charge effects [eia-epm-5-6-a]. The same load at the U.S. average of 14.19 cents would be about $45,000 per month [eia-epm-5-6-a]. The California premium on this one facility is roughly $500,000 a year, which is why the lighting efficacy and HVAC choices above are not compliance details; they are the difference between a viable margin and none.

The EIA average blends every commercial customer and every schedule. Your actual price will be the sum of your B-19 delivery charges, either PG&E generation or your CCA's generation rate, plus the PCIA if you are on a CCA or DA. Use the average to size the problem, then pull your own tariff to solve it.

Rebates that offset the Title 24 build

PG&E's Agriculture Energy Savings Action Plan pays per-fixture rebates of roughly $9 to $70 on DLC Horticultural QPL LED fixtures with tested efficacy of at least 3.24 umol/J, for retrofits and new construction, and names cannabis as an eligible crop; funds are limited and pre-approval and field verification are required [pge-aesap-grow-lighting]. SCE's Agriculture Energy Efficiency program pays per-fixture rebates on DLC-listed horticultural LEDs at 2.86 umol/J or better with separate tiers for greenhouse, non-stacked indoor, and stacked indoor cannabis [sce-agee]; that source is an implementer summary, so confirm current tiers with SCE. Both thresholds sit well above the Title 24 floor, so a fixture that earns the rebate also clears the code.

Supply options for a grow: CCA, DA, or bundled

Delivery is fixed by the schedule above. Generation is where a grow has some choice, and in California that choice is narrower than in any other state with retail competition. If your site is inside a Community Choice Aggregator's jurisdiction you are already on it unless someone opted out. Direct Access requires winning a slot in the June lottery; in 2023, 560 PG&E customers filed for 185 GWh of room and 836 were still waiting at year end, while SCE's 326 filers all cleared because it had 1,206 GWh open [cpuc-da-lottery-2023]. A grow in SCE territory has a realistic shot at a DA contract; a grow in PG&E or SDG&E territory should plan on CCA or bundled rates and file the notice anyway. The mechanics are in the California switching guide, and the schedule-by-schedule comparison is on the California rates page.

For comparison with a Western market that has a single utility and an exit-fee regime instead of a lottery, see Nevada cultivation. For a large indoor market with a retail-choice cap that actually has room, see Michigan cultivation.