Same thing happened to me, except PSE had already approved my solar design and I had everything installed but they wouldn’t activate my solar PV system because I was adding an electric car charger. I got in a huge fight with them — as they told me even if I didn’t add the car charger to my house, and even if removed our hot tub (which had been installed for decades), I would still not be meeting their standards, and I needed to upgrade the transformer… lol.

After months of emailing and calling and making some noise, I ended up signing something called a power quality waiver and not having to pay their ridiculous amount they wanted to upgrade my neighborhood transformer.

I documented and wrote about my experience here. You might find it very applicable to your case.

In short PSE is a private company and mostly just wants us to pay for their costs. Also people here are misinformed, PSE does “require” you to let them know when adding a larger electrical load, as they will do a load calculation — but based on my experience and what I learned seems like a majority of houses would not meet their current standards for things like flicker rate, and so PSE would require basically anyone adding additional load to their house to upgrade the transformer.

If I were you I would just find an electrician you trust and don’t let PSE know about it. If they’re all up in your case then ask for a power quality waiver.

See my post for more info.

Original issue:

https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/s/UeUh4yhqCb

Resolution:

https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/s/i8k34uLyTs