ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area How do you do a Service Upgrade?

Good question. I live/work on the boundary between two utilities. Allegheny Power does the disconnect at the service head. When I'm finished the inspector puts his sticker on the new panel and I call the utility back
(the guy that disconnects usually gives me his cell #) and they reconnect.
I have not done an upgrade in Duquesne Light's area yet but I got screwed out of a job because of misinformation. Duquesne Light allows the electrician to disconnect and reconnect. After I finish the upgrade, the inspector would approve, I would reconnect and the inspector would notify the utility of the upgrade.
I've spoken to people at Duquesne Light many times about the "logistics" of a service upgrade. I wanted to know how they went about it so I could quote jobs. They always told me "Oh yeah, because of deregulation, we now charge $250.00 to cut-off and reconnect for an upgrade" Despite numerous opportunities, they never told me that I could do it myself! I quoted two jobs and made sure I told the customer about the $250.00 charge by the utility. It wasn't until I called a local inspector to introduce myself that HE mentioned that I could do the cut-out and reconnect myself.
To make matters worse, I told one of the customers about the charge and suggested they call just to verify the amount. Guess what - the utility told them the charge was $100.00! I really felt stupid. I meant to call the utility this week to ask about that discrepancy but didn't get to it.
I also bought lineman's glove and protectors for that job. I'll need them anyway.
BTW, I called Bashline in Grove City, PA to order gloves and was told that there is a 30 week wait for the rubber gloves. I ended up buying from Mitchell Instrument - no problem, got them within a week.
Don

Don:
In Grove City is Halls Safety Equip Corp. out on route 173 N they have gloves in stock.
Their phone number is 1-800-227-4255 and they have a website-WWW.hallssafety.com

Here in my area in mid MO the utility cuts the overhead and then after the city inspector stickers it they will reconnect the overhead line. We are not allowed to do anything to the drop.

I deal with three, no four now, utilities. One, (Cinergy) officially won't let us even cut the seal, let alone do the reconnect at the weatherhead. The second, our local REA/REMC, doesn't care about the seal or reconnect YET, but I'm told that will change shortly. IP&L trouble guys in Indianapolis usually grump if we DON'T do the reconnect (they have to get out of the truck, I guess) The newest PoCo (?) is Vectern, and we're scheduled to do a panel change-out to CB's in the near future in their area, but they haven't returned my calls yet about their specs. We use "squeez-ons" (H-taps) from Burndy, a Burndy crimp tool and 3M 2" 33+ from Graybar, usually. They have the hot gloves, as well.

Oh, inspections are like that, too. Some require inspects first, some don't care, and Indianapolis allows license holders to self-inspect services for connect/re-connect.

[This message has been edited by Dallas (edited 09-15-2001).]

Same in Britain. Officially, it's a criminal offense for anyone but a PoCo employee to cut a seal.

Hello Paul,
While it's not a criminal offense here (except to put jumper bars in behind the meter)the PoCo Cinergy probably would like it to be so. The first time we found out how much they disliked us cutting seals, or pulling meters, we responded to a call and found the meter base SMOKING. (loose connection had melted through the cast pan) We cut the seal and yanked the meter! When the PoCo service man got there, he threw a fit, and a week later we received a letter from their legal dept telling us that if we ever did that again, they wouldn't do new connects or reconnects if we were involved. That's how bad they can be, sometimes.

[This message has been edited by Dallas (edited 09-16-2001).]

We regularly cut seals to assess the condition of the Meter pan when doing estimates. Some do have locks on them which require a phone call to get removed (and up to 2 Bus. Days), but even the locks are being cut off recently because they're too rusted for them to unlock. They tell us to just cut them open.

Bill

Sounds like the sort of inflexible, unreasoning official that we colloquially call a "Jobsworth." You know the type: "More than my job's worth to let you do that," or something similar.

I think most of our utility guys would probably accept a broken seal in a genuine emergency of this sort, though.

In fact, I remember about 4 years ago I had to disconnect service & strip out a main panel and other fittings on a building which was to be demolished. I spoke to a local engineer (different co. to where I am now) and he said he was sorry but they couldn't get anyone out at the time scheduled. Told me to go ahead and break the seal to pull the main fuse and they'd be along next day to disconnect at the pole & remove their equipment.

That's the sort of guy it's nice to deal with!

What about the OSHA rules that say you can't work on energized equipment?
Don(resqcapt19)

Don,

That's part of the reason for my question. I'm talking strictly residential here, but how could this work be done without someone working live? If it's not the electrician it's the utility worker. I don't see how it can be done otherwise, that is without shutting down a large amount of others at the same time.

Bill