ends. The work was by my own 31 years of electrical engineering judgment, the work of a competent but unlicensed electrician. Wallace had charged Tamsin and Kendrick $4,000 in cash for the installation in September of 2023. I called Maren Halverson at the New Mexico Public Service Commission Consumer Protection Division on the morning of the 3rd of November.
Maren had been Edith's classmate at New Mexico Tech for her master's program. Maren had taken a state regulatory position in 2018. She handled small property solar theft cases as part of her regular case load. She listened for 30 minutes. She said, "Otto, I am opening a formal investigation file today.
I am also referring the case to the Sandoval County Sheriff for criminal investigation under New Mexico statutes section 30-16-4. Electricity theft is a fourth-degree felony at any value above $500. The 47 kWh you have already documented are worth approximately $4,200 at residential rates. The case is a clean felony. We will pursue it through the state regulatory and criminal channels simultaneously."
I told her I appreciated the response. I asked her before we ended the call whether the New Mexico state regulatory framework imposed any duty on me to maintain consistent voltage to the unauthorized recipient pending investigation. She paused. She said in her careful regulatory voice, "Otto, the state of New Mexico does not impose any duty on a private off-grid system operator to maintain particular voltage characteristics for an unauthorized recipient. Your inverter output is your property.
Your voltage characteristics are your design decision. The unauthorized recipient takes whatever voltage your inverter outputs. We covered the principle in regulatory law school. It is called the no duty to the thief doctrine. If your inverter happens to be running at non-standard voltage parameters for any reasonable engineering purpose, testing, diagnostics, load characterization, surge protection calibration, the unauthorized recipient does not have legal standing to complain about damage to her equipment from your voltage."
I sat for a long minute after Maren hung up. I thought about my father and his 38 years on the Santa Fe Railroad. I thought about my grandfather Clement and the adobe walls he had laid in 1924. I thought about Edith's MIT classmates and the Sandia engineers she worked with. I thought about every grid tie inverter I had designed across 31 years at Los Alamos.
I thought about the engineering schematics I had drawn at my own kitchen table across the past six months for a custom voltage modulation routine I had been developing for academic publication. I said on the back porch to Sigrid that evening, "Sigrid, I have an idea. I want your blessing." I told her the idea. She listened for 40 minutes.
She asked three careful questions. She said in her quiet Norwegian Lutheran Minnesota voice, "Otto, do it. Do it carefully. Do it within the engineering parameters that Edith will verify. Do it with Maren's regulatory acknowledgement in writing in advance.