WOOHOO!

I came home today, after 1.5 weeks of hearing absolutely nothing about the progress of my paperwork or project to find a plastic clip on the sidewalk. I recognized it as the clips the electric company puts on their panels and looked up to the panel to find a shiny new NET electrical meter. I was elated! Then I realized that nobody had notified me this change was being made, and so I hadn't been able to shutdown my servers. That's very bad.

I go inside and am absolutely baffled by the fact that the power has clearly not been off in my house. That's right, they switched out my electrical meter without disconnecting my power. How is that possible? I haven't the faintest idea.

I'd sent off an email several days ago bitching about the project management on this project. The guy was just terrible at communicating project status. I basically never knew what was going on except the three days the crew was here doing the installation, because they kept me well informed and always showed up to work on time, etc.

Anyway, so without any communications at all, I sent off an email to the sales guy several days ago. Nothing. Sent off another email to him and the head of the colorado division. Nothing. Today I sent an email to the sales guy, the head of the colorado division, the project manager and the Operations Manager for Arizona and Colorado.

Then I called Xcel. Xcel verified they'd installed a NET meter for me, and that they believed I was good to go on the solar installation, but the guy that answered the phone couldn't be positive. We agreed it would be better to wait for verification from Xcel and REC before I turned anything on.

Then I got a phone call from Jason Zink the Operations Manager for Arizona and Colorado. He first apologized for all the problems, and said that my complaints were not falling on deaf ears, then walked me through verifying that everything was ready.

Then he walked me through turning the system on. Now...it's 6pm on October 6th so it's unlikely the system is generating enough electricity to even power up the DC side of the system, but still...It's on. Tomorrow morning it'll start generating massive amounts of electricity. SO FUCKING COOL!

And I found another company to come take care of the shade problem, so sometime this week someone will be out to tell me if I get to keep my black walnut tree or not, and hopefully give me some advice on my other tress health also. I really hope I get to keep the black walnut...I hate to have to cut down trees.