cts | Volt a Day | Meter Muddle October 31, 2010

Continuing on from the exposition at the beginning of the continuing saga of charger installation, this is the state of affairs related to the electrical meter.

Over the summer Southern California Edison sent me a notice that they would have to removed the TOU-EV because the dual-meter adapter was no longer being used. There would be no cost to me and someone from SCE would contact me to arrange the work.

No one every did.

In October, when we started poking around at SCE to determine my rate for the Volt, and whether anything else would be necessary for installing the charger, Bob Magaha (I am sure that’s not spelled right) called from SCE to start the process of removing the old TOU-EV meter. He said that it was up to me whether to have SCE use their contractor, or I could use mine and SCE would pay for it. I said I was happy to have them use theirs.

That was after I had already talked to someone at SCE, and gone through their website to determine that the cheapest rate would be to remove the TOU-EV and just have the entire house on the TOU meter. Great, I love simplicity.

Bob came out with his contractor on the same day that I was getting the new charger installed. He had Edison’s contractor with him. He made it sound on the phone like some work would happen that day, but the contractor was just there to look at things. The contractor explained that he would write up an estimate, submit it to SCE, the estimate would get approved and he’d submit for a permit. There was only one person running around Los Angeles Country getting all of the SCE contractors permits, so that could take another few days. And then he would come out and start the work.

The work was just moving the feed that came out the bottom of my TOU-EV meter, and connecting it to a breaker in the main panel instead. Of course, there would be some stucco to patch. He felt they would have the whole process finished in a month.

After he left someone else called from SCE and said that they had re-worked the numbers and if I stuck with the TOU-EV, dual-meter setup I would save three hundred dollars a year. Bob called back about something else and I mentioned it to him. He said in that case they would have the contractor estimate work for installing another subpanel in the garage, which would then have a breaker for the existing charger and another for the new charger. That sounded great. I asked whether I could use my own contractor (since Mr. Electric had been so great) and he said no, it had to be their contractor. I’m not sure when that changed, but since they were paying I didn’t complain.

Yesterday a fellow named Mark showed up from SCE unannounced. He said that someone had told him the battery was dead in the TOU-EV meter, so he was there to replace it. Sure. Testing it and taking it apart he said it seemed fine, but he replaced it anyway.

Bob called yesterday to say that the contractor had the estimate approved, the city permit in hand and wanted to schedule the work. I called back and offered some mornings next week that the contractor could try, and asked why the contractor just didn’t call me himself. “He’s not allowed to, since he’s an Edison contractor.” See also: getting to use your own contractor would be better.

So now we are waiting for parts for Mr. Electric to come back and correct the installation (which seems perfectly good) so that the city inspector is happy. And we are waiting for the SCE contractor to come and throw a wrench in the new charger installation by installing a second subpanel and moving both EV charger circuits to that. It’s like what happens when you put a chicken on a merry-go-round. Flustered cluck.