US versus DE installation costs [RE-wrenches]

Doug Pratt dpratt at pacific.net
Fri Apr 18 20:22:33 PDT 2003


-----Original Message-----
From: John Berdner [mailto:jberdner at sma-america.com] 

<snip> and then they will tell you they would never take the time to go
around and throw the switches during an outage presuming they even knew
where these switches were located, which they don't. <snip>

Ah John...always a delight listening to you.

Actually, I experienced a PG&E lineman locking off an intertie system
during repairs just last week. It happened at Real Goods Solar Living
Center, and I was standing in the power room wondering how many incoming
DC circuit breakers to throw off because the utility was down, the wind
was ripping (that's WHY the utility was down), and some fool had removed
all the "toasters" that were supposed to take care of the excess wind
output when the utility's down, so the batteries were toasting instead. 
  The local PG&E guy walked in, introduced himself, and said, "I gotta
shut off your intertie cuz we're doing repairs right across the street.
Jeez, I've never done this before...oh...guess I better get a lock." 
  So don't say it'll never happen. Give a utility guy a switch, and
he'll eventually find an excuse to use it! 
  Now...on the other hand, the Solar Living Center is about as
we-do-solar-in-your-face as it's possible to get, so our local guy might
have figured it was a good CYA idea. (I didn't bother to tell him he was
only locking off the 10kW array. The 123kW array's shut off is over in
that other building. :-) 
Cheers,
Doug Pratt

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