October 27, 2007

24kW of Power

Finally. After getting this whole process started back in February of this year, Pacific Gas & Electric has run a new cable to the side of our house, capable of feeding a new 200A panel which is more than enough power to run everything at the same time.

It's been a frustrating process. Not because of the people of PG&E, but because of the process. For the most part, the people I had to talk with were very helpful and friendly. They often did everything they could to help me out. In particular, when a crew didn't show up to disconnect the power on Thursday morning, John Herbner at our local service center did went out of his way to make sure we could get the work done and power back before the weekend. And Diane S. at the San Jose service center helped me out earlier on as well. However, both of them are managers and it was upon me to get ahold of them to move things forward. I suspect things would have been fine even if I didn't talk to them, but it would have taken longer and there would have been additional delays. The crew that came out were always friendly and helpful as well.

But it always just took a long time for things to move from one step to the next. Typical time between stages of the process were on the order of weeks, rather than days. I had to constantly call and leave messages, and then try to find other people to leave messages with, in order to get information about what I needed to do and move things forward. In fact, on that Thursday when I got ahold of John, it was only because I tracked down the physical address of the local service center and then ambushed an employee entering the building that I could tell someone that no one had come to disconnect the power. No one at the San Jose service center which I was previously communicating with could help me.

Anyway, I'm glad it's over with, and hopefully someday solar cells and electronics will be efficient enough so we can all live directly off the sun.

Posted by josuah at October 27, 2007 2:38 AM UTC+00:00