On Sun, 27 Oct 2019 14:34:53 -0700 (PDT), Thomas wrote:

They are going to turn them off for you.
Sounds like you are in the know.
Plan accordnally as you know.
Good luck out there from the east coast.

When I lived in the mountains back east, the power didn't go off more than
a few times in a decade, whereas here in the mountains of California, the
power goes off once a month for a day or so, on average.

This outage started on Saturday, where they gave us 24-hour notice
(although the exact time is never even close so you have to just assume it
will happen, which it will), where they just texted everyone that it's
going to happen again on Tuesday, which implies they turned it back on in
the interim, which they didn't).

So we're looking to have the generator run the house for probably at least
until Thursday and THEN they'll turn on the juice, which is the spike I'm
trying to ask how to protect against.

I can't figure out what the difference is as we don't even get tornadoes or
ice storms or thunderstorms out here like we did back east.

Anyway, PG&E still hasn't restored power to us in the mountains around
Silicon Valley, even as the telltale smell of wood smoke that came through
last night has abated greatly with the slight winds.

As for "them turning it off", I must not have been clear that the pumps are
working just fine since the generator has been running (albeit with some
workarounds which are covered separately).

What I did was hit the circuit breaker for the pool pumps and for the
individual well pumps which are deep down underground.

I left the circuit breaker on for the booster pressure pump.

For some reason, the stove locked up (it does that when the power
fluctuates), but so far, we've been running on the generator for more than
a day now with no indication from PG&E when they'll turn the power back on.

The good news is that everyone out here has a generator, where it's like
everyone back east has a snow shovel.

The main thing I am worried about are the spikes when they turn the power
back on in a few days causing damage to the motors.