Energized, and Down to One Gate
How four unowned items became a phone call, a rater we already had, and a solar inspection that's now the whole ballgame
The Report Card
Three weeks ago I wrote about four things I believed were handled that nobody was actually doing: the HERS rater, the SDGE meter set, the solar commissioning, and a signature nobody had asked for. I said the fix was naming an owner and the specific thing each item was waiting on.
Here's how those four actually played out. Two closed almost immediately. One closed in a way that proved my own audit wrong. And the fourth grew into the only thing standing between this project and its Certificate of Occupancy.
The Signature Nobody Asked For: Closed in a Day
This was the easy one. My energy consultant needed my architect, Sean Canning, to sign a corrected compliance document, and Sean had only ever been copied on the email that mentioned it -- never actually asked. I emailed him directly. He signed. Seven thousand dollars in incentive money, unstuck by one email that should have gone out in July.
The HERS Rater: I Was Wrong, Not the System
This is the one that surprised me. My last post said nobody was retained to do the HERS field test, based on a phone call where the firm I'd written down as "our rater" had no idea who I was.
On August 17, my contractor Morgan Lyew forwarded me a set of HERS certificates from a rater named Ryan Bailey, with a one-line message: "HERS should be cleared today. I'll double check Accela tomorrow. Baby steps!" Bailey had emailed her directly that morning: "3310-3318 Luna Ave HERS Certs & Invoice." The city's reviewer, Dave Finney, replied within two hours: "Thank you, Morgan. I'll clear the HERS for these."
Ryan Bailey was the rater. He'd been the rater the whole time. My contractor's team had told me back on August 11 that "Morgan already has the HERS inspector settled" -- and that was true. The bad phone call I'd made on August 12 only proved that one specific firm wasn't involved. I turned that into "nobody is retained," and then I spent days pushing an email that needed to go out, when the actual problem was that I'd misread my own evidence.
There's a smaller detail in here worth keeping: the certificates cleared while permanent power was still nine days away. I'd assumed the field test needed live power to the units. It didn't. I never found out how Bailey tested without it, and it stopped being worth asking once the certificates existed.
The lesson inside the lesson: auditing your own project doesn't mean every conclusion you draw is correct. It means you're finally looking at primary sources instead of a status update. Sometimes what you find is a real gap. Sometimes what you find is that you misread the evidence you already had. Both are only visible if you actually look.
Permanent Power: The Phone Call Worked
The other thing from that audit was simpler: SDGE wasn't sitting on an inspection queue. There was one phone call that had to come from us, to a specific desk, and nobody had made it because nobody knew it existed.
On August 14, the SDGE project coordinator, Dan Rodriguez, called my contractor unprompted -- while he was supposedly on vacation -- and gave a real date: about a week out, landing "around Wednesday of the following week." That would be August 26.
SDGE beat their own estimate. On August 25, I wrote to my solar company's project coordinator: "We have now been energized by SDGE." Her reply: "Congratulations on getting energized!"
Seven units. One meter connection. Done, one day ahead of the date a utility project coordinator gave us over the phone eleven days earlier. After eleven months fighting this same utility over a power line clearance back in 2025, and after weeks of unreturned texts to a number that -- it turned out -- doesn't accept text messages at all, this is the SDGE story I didn't expect to be writing: the one where they called us first and beat their own schedule.
Solar: A False Alarm, a Hospital Stay, and the Last Gate
This is the item that grew instead of closing, and it's worth walking through because two different things happened inside it.
First, a scope question that turned out to be nothing. For over six weeks I was tracking down who was supposed to install new electrical service panels for the solar systems at my two existing duplex units. My contractor's team had asked the installer directly whether the panels were even needed, and gotten no clear answer -- so I carried it as an open, unowned item, blocked on nobody. On August 20, the installer's coordinator, Katie Randolph, answered it in one sentence: "New service panels for 3312 and 3314 are not part of our scope of work. Our plan was to connect the solar to the sub panel in each unit." Six weeks of tracking an item that was never real, because a line in an old punch list got read as a scope document instead of a shorthand note.
Second, the installer's lead, Alex Guerra, was in the hospital. Katie had been covering for him since mid-August, which is also why some threads went quiet -- not neglect, an actual medical emergency at the company doing our work. He was back by late August. I never pushed on him personally, and I'm glad I didn't try to chase a hospitalized contractor over solar plaques.
By August 26, the picture had simplified to almost nothing. My contractor's exact words: "all of the holds are cleared except solar (including ROW and HERS)." Right-of-way, cleared. HERS, cleared. The building can't get its final inspection until the solar hold releases, which means the PV inspection date and the building final date are now the same date.
What's actually left on the solar side isn't field work anymore. It's paperwork and physical labels. The installer needs engraved placards -- a code requirement, not something you can print on a sheet of paper or 3D print, because an inspector who spots a non-compliant placard writes a correction, and a correction on the very last open item costs more days than the labels do. I offered to pay for rush engraving rather than wait on a standard order.
And underneath the paperwork sits one more thing, and it's mine: two SDGE account numbers. When the meters closed at the start of construction and got replaced with temporary power, SDGE closed the electric billing accounts for both existing duplex units. Getting them reopened has been stuck inside SDGE's own system since July 31 -- a request that, in their own project coordinator's words, was "actively working toward a resolution" as of August 4, and then went quiet for over three weeks. Without those two account numbers, the solar installer can't file the interconnection applications that let the system actually turn on and start generating power I can bill against.
As of today, seven of the eight accounts are confirmed. One -- the second duplex unit -- is still outstanding, and I'm running it down directly with SDGE rather than through email relays. Everything else on this project, seven finished units, a Certificate of Occupancy, tenants who can move in, is sitting behind that number and a set of engraved metal labels.
Where This Leaves Things
| Item | Status |
|---|---|
| Signature for the $7K incentive | Closed |
| HERS field test and certificates | Closed -- Aug 17 |
| Permanent power / SDGE meter set | Closed -- energized Aug 25 |
| Solar service panel scope question | Closed -- was never real |
| Solar PV inspection | Open -- last condition on the Certificate of Occupancy |
| Second SDGE account number (3314) | Open -- gates the interconnection filings |
Two open items, both close to done, both narrower than anything on this list three weeks ago. The building is finished. The units are tested and tuned. What's left isn't construction. It's a phone number at a utility company and a set of metal placards on a rush order.
The Lesson
The four-things audit worked, but not the way I expected. Two items closed because naming an owner and making one phone call or sending one email was genuinely all it took. One item closed because the finding itself was wrong, and the fix was re-reading my own evidence instead of trusting the conclusion I'd already written down. And the fourth didn't close at all -- it revealed the actual shape of what was left, which turned out to be smaller and more specific than "solar is a mess." It's one utility account number and one rush order for engraved labels.
That's the real value of an audit like this. It's not that it clears every item. It's that it turns a vague, exhausting "we're waiting on solar" into a list you can actually finish. Three weeks ago I didn't know what the last gate before the Certificate of Occupancy would be. Now I know exactly what it is, exactly who owes the next move on each half of it, and exactly what happens the day both close.