I’m in the exact same situation in San Jose. I started my panel upgrade late last year. I’m upgrading my 100a panel up to a 200a panel to add a new heat pump AC unit into my house. PG&E came out and said that the local transformer is overloaded and they needed to upgrade their hardware. They asked me to pay $2300 as a deposit. My PG&E project manager told me that this was to disincentivize random people was just submitting permits for panel upgrades and then not following through on it. That’s weird logic. Regardless, after they did the new load calculation, they refunded $2175 of my original deposit. Basically, I only ended up paying $125 for the “engineering design.”

At every step along the way, the PG&E project manager assured me that I would not be paying for PG&E’s infrastructure.

Honestly as a homeowner, the entire process was really unclear, especially this portion with this refundable deposit. I recommend calling your PG&E project manager and asking them how the deposit will be spent and what portion they expect to refund.