How Can I Consume Power When PG&E Cut The Power from the Pole?!?!

I have a quick question for the Sense Community…

When I had my panel upgraded from 100A to 200A service, PG&E came out to turn off my power at the pole for about 6 hours or so…

When I looked at my PG&E usage data on their website a few days later, I had some trickle usage the whole time that power was supposedly completely cut off… How does that work??? I saw them completely disconnect the wires, which were dangling (taped securely for safety… So it wasn’t hooked to my meter… How in the heck can my usage data show consumption???

There was likely some inductive coupling between the power lines and your drop. As long as there was a breaker panel connected to an always-on load, like Sense, there will be some current flow, which the meter will detect. The question is how much voltage the meter need to operate.

Are you saying your PG&E “Green Button” data shows trickle usage for the hours when the power was cut at the pole ??

Yeah… This has nothing to do with anything that my Sense…or my PG&E SmartMeter is measuring or detecting…

It has everything to do with the data that I pull down using the PG&E “Green Button”…

I don’t get it… They physically disconnected the wires on my rooftop (between the pole and my SmartMeter)… I visually saw the disconnected wires taped and dangling… So there should be absolutely NO juice coming into the house from the grid… AND this happened before my solar was installed, so it’s no residual power generation coming from solar (plus, why would PG&E see that data and charge me for it even if my solar was installed)…

No one has been able to explain to me why PG&E green-button data shows activity for the 6 hours (or so) that my house was physically disconnected from the grid…

I am not upset about this, mind you… But it is a HUGE mystery to me that continues to go unexplained… When I talk to people supposedly “in the know”, I just get the typical “well, you know PG&E”… Uh…no, I don’t know them…or how this is even possible…

Here’s a thought - If PG&E is like some other utilities, it will attempt to fill missing smart meter readings with so-called “calculated reads”, where PG&E looks at the energy gap between the meter reading before the smart meter stopped transmitting, and when the meter started re-transmitting, then tries to fill the gap with “calculated reads” data that sums to the difference during the gap. In your case, that might mean that the total usage during the last incomplete 15min period before they took out the power and the first incomplete 15min after the power went back on, got spread over the 6 or so hours that the lines were disconnected.

I’m betting on the “calculated read” theory. But unlike NV Energy, PG&E doesn’t alert us to calculated vs. actual reads. At the same time, based on my Sense vs. PG&E data, I’m pretty sure that I’m seeing 99.9% actual reads fro my PG&E account vs. lower numbers for NV Energy (sample size 2 - I have seen a low of 15% and a high of 98%)

I think you are on to something @kevin1

Here are a couple of screenshots… One is the hour-by-hour chart of my electric usage for the day of the disconnect (and those hours shown as “Estimated”)… And the second screenshot is the spreadsheet data that came off of the “Green Button” extract.

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Thanks for answering the question of how does PG&E delineate a “calculated/estimated read” ! I and wondering which Green Button option you used to get hourly data. Mine always seems to come in 15 minute increments… I like the added resolution, but I’m trying to understand whether that’s just an option difference or a structural difference in reporting. I don’t get a cost column either…

Honestly, I am not even sure how to get the 15 minute detail that you are able to get.

I have been told repeatedly that PG&E data is in 15 minute increments, but I don’t see that level of detail at all. I wonder if it is because my electric generation provider is Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SVCE). Maybe the level of detail is dictated by the generation provider.

I’m on CCA with PG&E as well, but in San Mateo County, so Peninsula Clean Energy. But I’ve had 15min resolution since well before that for both the bottom CSV options for the PG&E Green Button…

Hmmm… I use the “Export Usage for Range of Days”… Not the one based on billing period like you use…

I wonder if that’s the difference? I’ll have to check later today and report back…

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Nope… No difference… Still one hour granularity… And interestingly enough, I notice that the cost information is not included in either views… I only got that view when I went back to the date of my panel upgrade in the spring… So sometime between then and now, they must have removed that as exportable metadata…

Interesting… The only other difference I might have is that I have attached an Eagle to my home smart meter a while back. What brand of smart meter do you have ?

https://rainforestautomation.com/rfa-z114-eagle-200-2/

My smart meter is made by GE.

Same as me… Guessing it is one of these.

Yes…it looks similar… Mine doesn’t have the “hoodie” cowl thingy on top… But the LCD display looks identical…