Thu, Jun 5, 3:07 PM

to Will, Michael, Troy, David, Craig, Jason

Hi Michael, and everyone else:

Firstly, thanks for everyone’s time. This is a really unfortunate predicament and situation that I never anticipated being in, so thanks all for being cordial and trying to keep this moving and explain things along the way. Michael, I called this morning and left you a message. Please give me a call back when you have time, regardless of whether you directly reply to this email or not (thank you, appreciate it).

To the gist of it:

I spoke with a couple people today at PSE.

I started with a residential advisor, Adrian.

Adrian told me once approval is granted from net metering that they system is good-to-construct as is. The only thing they are waiting on is L&I inspection. The system is 100% good from their side of things. He also told me, that during the approval process, the transformer size and other PSE infrastructure was and has been taken into account. He said he has never ran into an issue where construction services gets involved, let alone has the ability has ever overridden a net metering approval.

Given this, I am deeply confused as a PSE customer, and am feeling like there is some major internal disconnect happening here, between PSE departments.

I understand you (Michael) said “Because the customer is making a change to their power, PSE requires that you meet current standards. When running the numbers on our VDrop with the service wire and transformer size, the flicker rate failed at over 4%. That numbers need to be both under 4% on residential services.” — that is fine if that is your policy, but how can the net metering department approve my solar PV system, and undoubtedly dozens of others (who have not had their VDrop measured or site visits from project managers)?

I then spoke to someone else in the construction services department (REF: E516221005). She explained to me the ins and outs of how anytime a customer is adding load (hot tub, pool pump, or car charger) it is somehow supposed to trigger an inspection from construction services. Her reasoning seemed to be that anytime services like these are added, the meter would have to be disconnected, which would require PSE to come out, thereby triggering the load calculation.

In my opinion, this is totally naive as we all know a meter disconnect is not required to run a new circuit on an existing 200-amp service. But I digress…

This leaves us with the current problem, that you outlined from the start, with my home service not meeting the VDrop policy PSE has in place.

Will and Troy have alluded to this, and I broached this question on my phone to the woman I was speaking with in construction services, who agreed that it is a genuinely good question to ask:

Did / does the VDrop calculation you are using take into account the fact that my solar PV array, as installed, is sized to cover 18,920 kWh/year. Our home over the last year uses an average of 16,600 kWh/year.

Given the system size, under ideal conditions our home will produce more power than it is using, and the power our home is consuming will be fed directly from the solar PV system — not PSE infrastructure.

Are these parameters taken into account when you are calculating the potential VDrop? If not, can they be? And if they are taken into account, would the VDrop not then meet PSE’s standards? What if we remove the electric car charger and the hot tub? The pool is heated by natural gas and the pool pump is 1.8 HP when running, its usage is nominal.

Regardless of all this, I find this process very frustrating and the policy holes between departments and approvals are ripe for scenarios like this to happen, to not just me, but to other customers.

It is not sensible policy for a homeowner to have a contractor net-metering approved, start install, then leave the homeowner with an inoperative system installed on their roof, and then be told there is a hidden cost of thousands of dollars that needs to come to fruition for the system to actually be “approved” and interconnected.

The entire point of us going solar was 1) because it made economic sense as a long-term investment and 2) to live more eco-friendly. With these, for lack of a better word, hidden charges, the economic feasibility and viability is totally thrown out the window.

I don’t want to make a big stink about this, but there are other ways I as citizen could escalate this (AG’s office, contacting my local reps, local news, social media, etc) and I understand you are probably not in charge of policy, but you are my point of contact for this, and I would really appreciate if we can come up with a solution that does not include spending thousands of dollars on what, from my point of view, is a totally hidden cost-burden on me.

Is this possible?

If not possible, can you please disclose to me the underlying load-study and/or transformer-loading spreadsheet. According to WAC 480-100-103(1) and WAC 480-108-030(2) I should be able to obtain this.

A little stressed, frustrated, but still appreciative,

-ZempOh