At least 16 city projects across San Francisco are facing significant delays and swelling costs because of what officials at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission say are arbitrary technical requirements imposed by Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

The projects, including affordable housing developments, recreation spaces and public safety facilities, vary in size and scope. But Barbara Hale, the SFPUC assistant general manager in charge of power, said Tuesday that they’re all running into the same stumbling block.

During a meeting Tuesday of the SFPUC’s commissioners, Hale said PG&E is mandating that new construction or renovation projects be built to handle enormous electricity loads — power levels that far exceed what the projects actually require. PG&E is able to impose its will on city projects because it owns the power lines transporting SFPUC energy generated by the Hetch Hetchy system to city properties.

Complying with PG&E’s mandates has delayed projects by months — some for much longer — as designers and engineers are forced to retool their plans. And the cost of buying the necessary electrical equipment, combined with the expenses of delaying construction, can push project costs up significantly.

“PG&E has been a challenging partner in providing (electricity) distribution services in San Francisco,” Hale said. “I can’t explain why PG&E is requiring this. It’s not needed for safety, reliability or for legal reasons. They’re not requesting — they’re requiring.”

A small restroom for Muni bus drivers on Van Ness Avenue, for example, requires electricity for a light and a hand dryer. But the electrical equipment needed to comply with PG&E’s requirements would have required building a facility about eight times the size of the restroom itself. Luckily, Hale said, the city was able to find a workaround that sent power to the facility from a nearby building also owned by the Municipal Transportation Agency.

Most other projects don’t work out so well, and some have had to be scrapped outright.

Plans to expand a community room at the Ping Yuen North affordable housing development in Chinatown were nixed to make room for the electrical equipment PG&E required.

The Randall Museum, a children’s educational space in Corona Heights, finally opened last month after two years of delays, much of it blamed on PG&E’s electricity load mandates.

Sarah Madland, a spokeswoman for the Recreation and Park Department, which operates the museum, said a combination of equipment costs and construction delays added around $1 million to the Randall project. The Noe Valley Town Square was subjected to similar setbacks, as was a Navigation Center in Dogpatch.

And ongoing renovations of the Balboa Pool have also been ensnared by delays and cost increases. Madland estimated the project was set back by 13 months and $800,000 because of PG&E’s requirements.

“For reasons that we don’t completely understand, PG&E has put up all of these roadblocks that have led to wasting millions of dollars of taxpayer money,” Madland said.

SFPUC General Manager Harlan Kelly emphasized that other city departments were bearing the brunt of the costs associated with PG&E’s requirements.

“Our customers, our city family that we’re assisting in providing (electrical) services, they feel the impact — not the PUC,” he said.

There are 17 upcoming city projects, like the overhaul of the Golden Gate Park Tennis Center and four separate affordable housing developments that the SFPUC believes could also be impeded by PG&E. The city and PG&E have reached various stages of agreement over power issues on 14 additional projects, but that doesn’t mean the issues have been entirely resolved.

At the Balboa Pool, “the expectation is that the issue has been resolved, but the formalities have not been taken care of,” Madland said.

Andrea Menniti, a spokeswoman for PG&E, declined to answer specific questions, but said in an email that “PG&E is committed to collaborating with the City and County of San Francisco to help the SFPUC serve its customers, and we continue to energize electric projects safely and as quickly as possible.”

PG&E’s ability to insist on certain requirements is one facet of the complex relationship between the SFPUC and the utility, one that’s been fraught for decades.

In recent years, the SFPUC’s efforts to expand its clean-energy offerings throughout the city have raised questions about whether PG&E is throwing up roadblocks out of sheer competition. Hale said Tuesday that other, private developments are not being required to be equipped for the huge electrical loads that city projects are.

Under San Francisco law, new city-owned buildings automatically become SFPUC customers. The energy to those buildings is 100 percent renewable, generated mostly by hydroelectric power from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir.

In 2014, the SFPUC filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in an effort to get some clarity on the broad outlines of the SFPUC’s relationship with PG&E.

“Many of the interconnection-related disputes are pending a resolution at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and we continue to participate and collaborate with the SFPUC in settlement negotiations before FERC,” said Menniti, the PG&E spokeswoman.

The commission’s ruling is still likely years away. But Hale said even if a decision was rendered immediately, it still wouldn’t address many of the details governing what’s been an uneasy relationship between the two agencies, including issues of how much authority PG&E has over the city’s energy decisions.

The only solution, barring further messy and cumbersome legal action, Hale said, is for the two sides to hash things out for themselves.

“PG&E needs to sit down with the city and be reasonable about the requirements it imposes,” she said.