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I’ve found that when someone tries to convince you that something is anything except what it appears to be at face value, they’re gaslighting you.  Or as I sometimes call it, “Occam’s Knife Game” in which the player stabs around at every possible explanation except the simplest one, and in so doing reveals that they know what that explanation really is — it’s the one they’re avoiding.

In our latest episode, PG&E actually put forth some minimal effort for a change and sent some techs out to go noise hunting.  Note that we’ve been down this road before, and they affirmatively located a noise source within the Poplar Street substation.  This time their motivation in signal hunting appears to me not to have been for the purposes of actually locating the source of their noise, but rather to find something — anything — else they can blame the interference on.

From their hunting efforts, PG&E believed they’d found the “real” culprit, a cable TV service amplifier giving off spurious emissions on 30 MHz, and I was asked to see if I could confirm whether this was the same noise I was hearing at my station.  There are a few problems here already: I’m not monitoring or trying to use 30 MHz — that’s not even in an Amateur Radio band — and the type of noise I’m receiving is not the kind you’d normally expect to hear from a switching power supply or from spurious emissions from a cable TV amplifier.  I am receiving, and specifically monitoring for, 120 pulse-per-second arc noise, the kind of noise you’d get if the two peaks of a 60 Hz current were arcing to a ground wire or grounded object.  (My monitoring software watches 3.540 MHz and specifically cross-correlates the time-domain signal looking for a 120pps noise.  It will not easily identify other types of signals that don’t match this pattern.)

So I went out, again tonight, this time looking for this cable amplifier.  I was not able to locate it where PG&E asserted it could be found.  I did detect a “birdie” signal in the general vicinity of its supposed location at about 2300 Hz, but again, this is not the noise that’s causing interference at my station and not the noise I’m monitoring.

But while I was out hunting for this mysterious cable box, I did find a utility pole making a hellacious, buzzing racket.  I hadn’t noted this before, but it’s immediately next door to the pole that I reported back in 2024 (and which PG&E actually fixed a few months later).

Then I went to stand in the middle of the street with the cable box’s alleged location to my left and the substation in front of me, 90 degrees to each other.  If the true source of the trouble was the cable box, this would be a perfect location to tell whether the noise was coming from in front of me, or to my left, a vantage point not available from my station location, where the alleged cable box would have been more or less behind me with the substation in front of me.

And guess what: no noise to the left, plenty of noise to my front (and lots of noise to 45 degrees from the aforementioned pole).  Shocking.  Interestingly, the noise I pick up on 220 MHz is more of a very strong “white noise” type of emission now, not so much a buzzing.  More on that later.

For the sake of completeness, I then headed out to the Bay Trail and north to the Poplar Creek pump station.  This is as close as someone can get to the PG&E Poplar Substation while remaining on public land.  I’ve been here before, many times, for the same reason: to reconfirm that I’m not crazy, and that the substation is really where the signal is coming from.  You can probably guess the rest: yep, there’s a strong emission coming from the substation on 220 MHz.  Exactly where I’ve been finding it for the last two years and exactly where I’m likely to find it again tomorrow, and next week, and at this rate, in another two years.  Here I did pick up some buzz along with the white noise.

Much like my effort at the first location, here, too I found another utility pole producing a massive amount of RFI, this time one adjacent to Poplar Creek.  There are actually two poles on opposite sides of the creek here, and because of thick vegetation and this area being known to harbor rattlesnakes, I opted not to get sufficiently close to differentiate the poles at this time.  I had detected some intermittent noise from this pole in the past, but nothing like what I heard tonight.  I suspect that like much of PG&E’s aging infrastructure, this and the other pole I found tonight have just been degrading over time, and until they actually cause an emergency situation, PG&E is happy to simply ignore any maintenance.

I’ve captured my 220 MHz direction-finding and some audio recordings of the noise I observed on an annotated Google Map.  Here’s a preview:

To be completely scientific about it, I need to take another set of directional readings outside when there isn’t any notable interference, to prove a correlation (which I have also done before, but I’ll do it again for completeness).  The RFI has been extensive and nonstop the entire day today, however, and even as I write this after 9 PM PDT, the noise is still S9+6.  It will be necessary to get up quite early one morning, or to get lucky in the middle of the day for another set of observations.

The following morning, before the noise had started up yet, I ventured out again with my 220 MHz Yagi and, plot twist: there’s still a strong “white noise” emission coming from the substation.  It would seem likely that this emission is not the same emission as the 120 pps emission plaguing 80 meters in my neighborhood, but is in fact something else entirely.  I checked again with my 440 MHz Yagi and did not detect the same “white noise” emission, which suggests that whatever is producing this particular emission is more localized to the 1.25m band, or the 1.25m band is a harmonic of the band in which this noise originates.  (This is why when we do a science, we need a control: it’s not enough to just measure when things are happening- we need to compare with measurements when things are not happening too.)

I’m less concerned about whatever is producing spurious emissions on 220 MHz, as I’m not active on this band, however this noise still doesn’t belong there (and it wouldn’t shock me if it is somehow related to a coworker consistently getting dropped calls on his phone when he runs by the substation).

To better differentiate between this emission of lesser concern, and the emission I’m actually looking for, I’ll be taking future measurements with my 440 MHz Yagi.

In their effort to try to convince me that the problem is everything except PG&E, what they’ve actually done is gotten is my finding found two very loud additional sources that weren’t consistently loud before.

As best as I can tell, something is still producing electrical-arc noise, and it’s not, as far as I can tell, a mysterious cable amplifier box that I’m unable to locate.

PG&E has now been dodging this problem for a few months shy of two years.

Though there’s still no damned excuse for PG&E taking more than ten months to send someone out to investigate the noise source at the PG&E Poplar substation near my QTH, I did get a call last week after my second letter to PG&E’s CEO and my case being escalated to a supervisor in the customer call center, who then raised the issue with a handful of other supervisors.  It shouldn’t be this hard to get someone to react at a public utility, but at least they finally did.

It turned out there had been some activity at the substation in an effort to resolve the problem between March 31 when the source of the trouble was confirmed, and when I finally got a call from someone who knew what was going on.  Evidently PG&E has a fairly terrible communications problem when it comes to information moving between the people who actually work on the issue and the customer-facing call center and ticket tracking system.

The trouble has been isolated to the vicinity of a 230kV bus at the substation, though in the intervening weeks they’ve also power washed and cleaned up some 115kV systems.  Evidently the trouble is that they cannot simply power-wash around the 230kV bus; to do so would risk a catastrophic arc flashover because of the sheer potential difference involved.  (230kV is a LOT of electrical potential.)  From the explanation I was given, it sounds like PG&E does not have a redundant system for this 230kV bus either.  They can’t work on it without shutting it down, and they also can’t just shut it down to work on it– to do so would shut down power at the substation for everyone it serves.

Given the lack of redundancy, I asked how they do routine maintenance on this system just in general, and the answer could be summarized as “rarely, and at considerable expense.”  The systems themselves are designed to have a very long MTBF, but on the occasions that they do need to shut them down, they have to plan it out months in advance, bring in a mobile unit of some kind (presumably either power generation or a busbar on a flatbed maybe?) to keep things working while the 230kV system is shut down for maintenance.  This apparently happens only once every 4-5 years and can be a multi-million-dollar operation.

That said, all hope is not lost: they’re trying to book their infrared team to come out and image the system while it is under load to see if they can spot any “hot spots” which might be addressable without something as inelegant as a power-wash, and they’re also looking to work with their high-tech services team to see if there are other ways they might suppress the RFI and keep it from being a nuisance in our neighborhood.

But lets be very clear about one thing: what PG&E is doing at the substation, though it may be very inconvenient to fix, is still a violation of FCC rules.  And it doesn’t matter if it inconveniences a handful of Ham Radio operators, shortwave listeners, AM broadcast enthusiasts, or a thousand people’s cell phones; the rules are the rules and they don’t distinguish by how many people are affected or how troublesome it may be to correct the root cause.  (That said, I do believe I’ve observed a correlation between noise emanating from the substation and reduced signal quality of KRCB-DT on ATSC channel 5, but I need more data to confirm it.)

The PG&E supervisor promised to keep me better informed going forward as they continue to work on the problem, which is a very different attitude than what I got from the rest of the company between May 16, 2024 and May 16, 2025 (it was in fact one full year to the day between my opening of a case about the substation and receiving a call from a supervisor on Friday).

That’s what I know for now.  More to come, I hope.

It’s now been 10 months since I originally opened a ticket with PG&E regarding their RFI in my neighborhood, and though you’d never guess it by looking at Southern California right now, wildfire season is no longer a viable excuse for their inaction.  Moreover, this winter storm season has been tragically very mild, with almost no rain to speak of in January and none on the horizon, so winter storms are not an excuse for inaction either.

My contact within PG&E is ghosting me.  I haven’t heard back from the FCC or the ARRL in months either.  So I decided to drop a letter in the postal mail to PG&E’s CEO outlining succinctly what the problem is, why it’s a problem, and what they really need to do about it.  Here it is for your reading pleasure:

Ms Poppe:

Since March 12, 2024, I have been trying to get PG&E to resolve Radio Frequency Interference (RFI, also known as RTVI) that PG&E equipment is producing in the vicinity of my Amateur Radio station, beginning with the still-open case #5——–0.

PG&E does not appear to have a process for resolving this kind of problem. For example, it took until May 14, 2024 to resolve the closest source of interference to my station after the case was first ignored completely until May 9. Unfortunately, once that interference source was cleared, it came to light that there are several additional sources of interference nearby.

I have, on my own time and at my own expense, located these interference sources myself with my own equipment, and I’ve written monitoring software so your technicians can easily tell when the intermittent interference is active.  Sadly, despite my efforts, nothing has been done.

PG&E is obligated to resolve RFI issues arising from its equipment under FCC rules under Title 47, CFR sections 15.5, 15.13, and 15.15.

Additionally, it is in PG&E’s best interest to locate and resolve these problems, as they can be an early indicator of an unsafe condition, such as current arcing across an insulator.

Current that is producing RFI is current that is not being delivered to customers and current that could be generating heat or sparks and thus may be a potential fire risk. Ignoring RFI is unwise.

I would like PG&E to meet its obligations both to safety and under federal law and fix these interference sources.  Further, I strongly suggest that PG&E develop and implement consistent processes for this type of problem to ensure straightforward, timely resolution in the future.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable, and I think 10 months is plenty of time to track down a handful of RFI sources and get them fixed, especially as I have already done all the legwork of figuring out (mostly) exactly where they are.

A little over two weeks ago, I fractured my humerus in a cycling accident, and since that time I’ve been doing a lot of walking to try to minimize how much weight I put on while I’m stuck in a sling and unable to run, bike, or swim.  So it happened on Tuesday after I got my sutures removed downtown that I decided to walk home (about 1.5 miles).

As I was nearing home, I heard a familiar sound: the sound of arcing 60Hz power.  I looked around, and sure enough, I was standing underneath a PG&E power pole.  It was arcing so loudly I could hear it over the traffic of the nearby 101 freeway.

Because arcing is a dangerous condition, I noted the address and pole number, and called it in to PG&E’s emergency line.  They promised to send someone out to check on it.  If indeed they did send anyone out, they did nothing.  I went back over to the same pole yesterday, this time armed with my handheld Yagi and my HT, and confirmed both that the pole is still arcing, and that the arcing is definitely causing RFI.

I called it in to my PG&E “customer relations” specialist, who told me that the department responsible for investigating this kind of thing has been working on changing their processes so they don’t just ignore reports of arcing and RFI for months, but rather do something about them instead.  We’ll see.  I expect this pole to still be arcing two months from now, as is their usual custom.

It has now been 142 days since my initial reports of really bad RFI in my neighborhood to PG&E, and though they have fixed a few of the problematic poles, they still haven’t fixed them all.  When you hear PG&E talking a big game about all the safety inspections they’re performing, know that it’s performative BS.  If they really cared about powerline safety, they wouldn’t wait two months to investigate any report of RFI or power pole arcing.

Three days after they decided to send someone out again (finally), I got a call from PG&E’s RTVI hunter guy that he’d found a couple spots in the neighborhood, but unfortunately he called while I was in a meeting, so he got my voicemail.  He was calling to check to see if the locations he found aligned with where I had picked up the noise myself, and strangely enough, no, they did not!

What this means is he found two more locations that I didn’t even know about.

The following night the noise was unusually bad and choppy, so I decided to go out for a walk with my Yagi and my HT; this time I found yet another location, unfortunately behind someone’s house, but where the same type of sagging insulator was used that has been implicated in several other noisy poles.

And tonight, I decided to see if I could track down what was making the occasional snapping, crackling, or popping sound, and no it wasn’t a bowl of Rice Crispies.  This turned out to be another location entirely, and what’s particularly disturbing about this location is that it’s off the levee and completely surrounded by dry vegetation and people’s homes.  And once again, the same type of sagging insulators are implicated, this time on two poles which are connected.

Both of these two new locations only cause trouble when the wind is blowing; there seems to be some kind of fault that is triggered by the insulators moving slightly in the wind, which I could see from the ground.  I have of course relayed all of this information to PG&E.  Maybe some day they’ll act on it.

This brings the grand total of problematic utility poles in my neighborhood up to 6 now, including the original one that was close by, and that’s just the ones we know about.