Electrical contractor in Moorpark and Simi Valley.

What is different here

Two cities, one utility, and hills that burn.

Moorpark and Simi Valley are both incorporated cities in Ventura County, so an electrical permit is a city permit: Moorpark's building and safety office for an address in Moorpark, Simi Valley's for one in Simi Valley. Both are served by Southern California Edison, and both are ringed by hillsides inside the state's mapped fire hazard zones. The Mountain Fire of November 2024 burned in the hills west of Moorpark toward Camarillo.

That geography is why Edison's Public Safety Power Shutoffs reach these cities. When the Santa Ana winds come down through the passes, Edison can de-energize the circuits that run through the hills, and the neighborhoods on the edges of both valleys, from Wood Ranch and the hills above Simi to the newer tracts on the north side of Moorpark, can lose power for the length of the wind event and the line patrols that follow it.

Standby power

Backup sized to the house, on the gas line it already has.

Most homes in Moorpark and Simi Valley have a natural gas service, which makes a Generac standby generator with an automatic transfer switch the usual backup: it starts on its own when the utility power drops and hands the house back when it returns. County Line sizes the unit from a load calculation covering the circuits the household chooses, places it where the manufacturer's clearances, the city's rules and any homeowners association allow, and pulls the city permit.

Where the electrical service itself is the limit, the generator waits for the panel. Many of the houses in both cities were built between the 1960s and the 1990s on services sized for gas appliances, and adding a generator, an EV charger or a heat pump to a full panel starts with a load calculation and, when it is needed, a service upgrade with Edison. The standby generator page covers the units and the process.

Standby generators