A junior policy analyst at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington named Sander Vandermeer. Yes, another Vandermeer. This one no relation to Edith's partner Inga, just a recurring federal agency Scandinavian surname coincidence across many of my prior tellings. Read the article on a Saturday afternoon at his Capitol Hill apartment. He emailed me on Sunday morning.
He asked whether I would be willing to provide technical testimony at a federal regulatory rulemaking hearing scheduled for January on the topic of distributed energy resource theft protection. I accepted. The hearing was held on the 18th of January at the FERC headquarters in Washington. I flew out for 2 days. I testified for 90 minutes on the technical, regulatory, and policy dimensions of off-grid residential solar protection.
The hearing transcript ran 14 pages. The transcript will inform the FERC's eventual rulemaking on small distributed energy resource theft protection across the federal jurisdiction. Sander mailed me a small framed copy of the transcript's title page in March. The frame hangs in the inverter cabinet hallway between Maren's gratitude note and Sigrid's intaglio print of the array. Maren Halverson at the New Mexico Public Service Commission has been promoted to deputy director of the consumer protection division.
Her promotion was announced in May. The Cunningham case was cited in her promotion announcement as exemplary regulatory work in support of off-grid residential energy security. Maren sent me a handwritten note when the announcement ran. "Otto, thank you for trusting the regulatory process. The next off-grid homeowner facing this situation will have a clearer path because of you.
With gratitude, Maren." I framed the note. It hangs above my inverter cabinet between Sigrid's intaglio print of the array and the Albuquerque Journal article. I sit on the back porch in the evenings now with a cup of coffee and the family border collie Aldina at my feet. Yes, named for my grandmother, and I watch the Sandia mountains catch the sunset in the late New Mexico light.
The 42 solar panels feed the inverter cabinet. The inverter cabinet feeds the battery bank. The battery bank feeds the household. The unauthorized cable to lot 12 has been disconnected, capped, and physically removed from my service panel side. The transfer switch is in its normal operating position.
The Powerwall units are at 93% state of charge. The inverter output is a steady 240 volts at 60 hertz. The system is, by every measure I can read on the diagnostic panel, behaving exactly as I designed it to behave. The Tesla Model S Plaid is gone. The bollard, I mean the inverter, holds.
The light moves across the Sandia foothills the way the light has moved across these foothills for 400 years. The Cunninghams have been here for 101 of those years. The Cunninghams will be here for a long time yet. Aldina the border collie has, since the case closed, developed a habit of sitting on the back porch at sunset and watching the panels track the late afternoon sun across the array. The panels do not, of course, track the sun.