Warning: PG&E on the warpath

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electricguy61 said:
Just an update:

It's now almost 48 hours for the customer with no power. I thought I'd made some progress yesterday about 12pm, got through to a sympathetic senior person. Call the emergency number last night, wait on hold 4 different times, total of 1.5 hrs, to be told that it had been scheduled for 2pm, but had notes said "customer cancelled". Obviously no one had cancelled. The call center finally figured out that all "routine calls" had been cancelled because of "on going weather related emergencies". Mind you, the storms didn't start until late last night in the north bay, still haven't hit here, so there were no storm related emergencies, but the t-man was cancelled.

Because of "weather related emergencies", they could not schedule it today, but it is scheduled for sometime between 8am and 5pm tomorrow, which will mean the customer has been without power for 72+ hours. Unless of course, there are in fact "weather related emergencies", which will mean they'll get cancelled again.

Everyone I have spoken to has been great, very sympathetic and have tried hard to get it repaired. It is the Corporation, the "powers that be" that have created this situation. And they really don't care.
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What do you think would happen if you just hooked it back up?
 
SceneryDriver said:
That's what I'd do. Apologize later.


SceneryDriver
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With smart meters containing remotely activated disconnect contactors (not adequate for lockout), it is quite possible that PG&E would just cut the power off anyway unless you bypassed the meter. And doing that would really make them mad. :)

mobile
 
GoldDigger said:
With smart meters containing remotely activated disconnect contactors (not adequate for lockout), it is quite possible that PG&E would just cut the power off anyway unless you bypassed the meter. And doing that would really make them mad. :)

mobile
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What, madder than they are now? :roll: The customer already doesn't have power. What are they going to do, demand the customer provide power as punishment?
 
gadfly56 said:
What, madder than they are now? :roll: The customer already doesn't have power. What are they going to do, demand the customer provide power as punishment?
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I had a similar run-in with the gas company. We came home from a two week vacation in the Caribbean, travel weary, hungry, sweaty, and with lots of dirty laundry. We found the gas turned off for non-payment and a lock on the valve at the meter. My wife had paid the bill before we left, so we called the gas company, and after a bit of stonewalling, they finally admitted that the gas had been turned off in error. They said that they would be happy to send someone out to turn it back on sometime on Tuesday (this was Friday).

Not acceptable. I told the person on the line that if they didn't send someone out post haste that I would cut their lock off and turn it back on myself. She got huffy and told me that the earliest they could roll a truck to my house would be on Tuesday and that if I turned the gas on myself I would be breaking the law. I told her that she might as well call the police right now because I was headed out to cut their lock, and I hung up. I cut the lock, turned the gas on, and lit my pilot lights myself, so soon we had hot water and a working stove, and there was peace in the valley.

The police did not show up and I never heard another word about it.
 
gadfly56 said:
What, madder than they are now? :roll: The customer already doesn't have power. What are they going to do, demand the customer provide power as punishment?
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I was addressing the more general case of doing the work from start to finish without the cooperation of PG&E, not your case, which I agree could not really get worse.
Well, I suppose they could simply refuse to provide service at all for a month or two.
 
GoldDigger said:
I was addressing the more general case of doing the work from start to finish without the cooperation of PG&E, not your case, which I agree could not really get worse.
Well, I suppose they could simply refuse to provide service at all for a month or two.
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With no credits for monthly service fees for the days with "no service" on top of it, maybe even a reconnect fee gets tacked on.:(

They know there is literally no other choice for utility provided power.
 
After hearing this horror story, I'm glad National Grid lets us do everything. It sure makes it easier not having to schedule everything with them.
 
peter d said:
After hearing this horror story, I'm glad National Grid lets us do everything. It sure makes it easier not having to schedule everything with them.
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Everything?
Don't like where the transformer is located so you can move it as well?:cool:
 
Most not all of the office and staff at PG&E are OK. But the corporate law makers and some of the field techs along with some office people are (!@#$%^) heads.
 
electricguy61 said:
Just an update:

It's now almost 48 hours for the customer with no power. I thought I'd made some progress yesterday about 12pm, got through to a sympathetic senior person. Call the emergency number last night, wait on hold 4 different times, total of 1.5 hrs, to be told that it had been scheduled for 2pm, but had notes said "customer cancelled". Obviously no one had cancelled. The call center finally figured out that all "routine calls" had been cancelled because of "on going weather related emergencies". Mind you, the storms didn't start until late last night in the north bay, still haven't hit here, so there were no storm related emergencies, but the t-man was cancelled.

Because of "weather related emergencies", they could not schedule it today, but it is scheduled for sometime between 8am and 5pm tomorrow, which will mean the customer has been without power for 72+ hours. Unless of course, there are in fact "weather related emergencies", which will mean they'll get cancelled again.

Everyone I have spoken to has been great, very sympathetic and have tried hard to get it repaired. It is the Corporation, the "powers that be" that have created this situation. And they really don't care.
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Just a suggestion ... I'll take no credit for anything if you agree I take no blame ;)...

Have the customer (not you) call the power outage hotline and report it as an outage.
 
A couple of years ago I receive a call in the morning from one of our GC's that does insurance work. They were at a house with PG&E and a very elderly couple. The neighbors tree fell and took out their drop cable. When the drop got pulled one of the #2 AL hots in the rigid riser flashed and burnt off at the weather head. Line crew said to have wire replaced and they would come back and re-connect.

I called one of my guys and told him to go to the supply house to get some #2 CU and a new 1 1/4" weather head. He went to the house and installed the new wire and weather head in less than an hour.

I called GC back to tell them its ready for PG&E. GC called PG&E and was told the line crew should never have said they will hook it back up. A full new service application needs to filled out and the project would need to go through engineering which could take weeks or months. GC explained that we just replaced a damage wire, we didn't change the service or add any load. GC asked the rep that they contact the line crew to explain the situation but they refused. In the mean time the elderly couple was without heat or light.

Later that day the homeowner remembered he knew someone that retired from PG&E so he call them to see if they could help. Shortly after the call the line crew showed up and reconnected the service. If the homeowner didn't have his contact who knows when service would have been restored.
 
jaggedben said:
Just a suggestion ... I'll take no credit for anything if you agree I take no blame ;)...

Have the customer (not you) call the power outage hotline and report it as an outage.
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They already know the Smart Meter is Offline. After today's storms in California good luck in getting any services connected for a while.
 
As I said before they are pretty easy going here. I wouldnt even hesitate to bypass the meter with a bypass plate to get power going (cant think of why I would need to do that, say a tree smashed the meter maybe).

This topic came up a while ago, and I commented/theorized that regardless of any rules that are on paper somewhere, usually we deal with the line crew who are just out doing there jobs like we are, and Ill bet 90% of the time they dont care that you made a connection or had the meter jumped for a few hours. Probably worst case is you'll get some blow hard power trip type that will scold you, but I imagine even then the chance of the POCO actually considering it worthwhile to file a legal suit against you is pretty slim.
 
The advent of the smart meter has pushed awareness of the drop and service status from primarily involving the line crew to also come to the attention of data entry clerks, button pushers and efficiency experts.
The line crews are also to a much greater extent computer scheduled and work order driven.
If you know someone it can be possible to shortcut that bureaucracy, but it is hard for the people directly involved to initiate that.

mobile
 
All this talk about messing with meters reminded me of a job I did about 5 years ago. Service upgrade in a old building with 12 apartments. Old style meter setup with the meters tapped off a feeder in a long wireway. Replaced it with modern meter stacks. I start putting the meters into their new sockets and I hear this popping sound on some of them. Hmm, strange. I realize that half the meters are 120V meters, oops :dunce: So I ruined those. They were newer digital ones, but no display after getting 240. I wonder if the POCO tried and was able to get the unbilled KW off of them? I never heard squat from the POCO.
 
electrofelon said:
All this talk about messing with meters reminded me of a job I did about 5 years ago. Service upgrade in a old building with 12 apartments. Old style meter setup with the meters tapped off a feeder in a long wireway. Replaced it with modern meter stacks. I start putting the meters into their new sockets and I hear this popping sound on some of them. Hmm, strange. I realize that half the meters are 120V meters, oops :dunce: So I ruined those. They were newer digital ones, but no display after getting 240. I wonder if the POCO tried and was able to get the unbilled KW off of them? I never heard squat from the POCO.
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Chances are with 120V meters, the demand was quite low and not worth pursuing over a few dollars. Or they just sent an estimated bill.
 
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