On Monday, October 28, 2019 at 11:57:53 AM UTC-4, Arlen _G_ Holder wrote:
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).

You said the well pumps fill 10000+ tanks once a month and they are
full. So, I don;t see the issue with those pumps, as they would be
off. If they have some controllers associated with them that are
powered all the time, then that could be an issue.

With an automatic transfer generator running, you should be immune from
any turn-on transient. The generator isn't going to cut over in
milliseconds or probably even for a few seconds. I'd bet the protocol
calls for normal voltage to be back for some reasonable time period,
eg 10 seconds, a minute. If I was designing it I'd go with about a
minute. With power outages it's not unusual for the power to come back
on for a couple seconds, then disappear again.

I wouldn't bother, but if you want to there is no harm in turning off
loads that are not needed.