“Electrical distribution engineering (120V–60kV), EV charging design and permitting, PG&E QAD services.”
“Licensed electrical engineering for EV charging stations and fleet electrification: site design, capacity and load planning, permitting, NEVI and grant support, and utility coordination across the Western United States.”
“SLC operates across California, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington, with project experience throughout the Western United States. The firm is based in South Lake Tahoe, California, and serves clients statewide in California plus the three adjacent Western states where Frank Sylvester, P.E. carries active engineering licenses.”
“Frank Sylvester, P.E. carries active professional engineering licenses in California, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington. SLC is the Engineer of Record on projects in all four states, and the firm also handles work in other Western states under specific project licensing arrangements.”
“SLC sits on the project owner's side of the table during bid development, contractor selection, design review, construction administration, and commissioning. The Owner's Engineer engagement gives owners independent technical oversight on every major decision, with Frank Sylvester, P.E. personally leading each engagement. Scope is typically tailored to the project size and the owner's internal capacity.”
“A battery energy storage system, or BESS, stores electrical energy in batteries and dispatches it when it is worth the most: shaving a demand peak, backing up critical loads, or carrying solar production into the evening hours.”
“A BESS charges from the grid or from on-site generation such as solar, stores that energy chemically in battery modules, and discharges it through an inverter that converts DC back to AC power the site can use.”
“A microgrid is a local electrical system that can disconnect from the utility grid and run on its own, carrying its loads from on-site sources such as batteries, solar, and generators. The defining capability is islanding: a microgrid controller senses an outage, separates from the grid at a defined point, and keeps the site energized until utility power returns.”
“Behind-the-meter battery storage is a system installed on the customer's side of the utility meter, serving the site's own loads and bill economics rather than selling into the wholesale grid. Front-of-the-meter storage, by contrast, is a grid asset the utility or a developer operates.”
“An electrical distribution engineer, sometimes titled an electrical distribution designer, designs the systems that move power from the utility into and through a site: the service, the feeders, the switchgear, the transformers, and the overhead or underground lines that carry it.”
“Electrical distribution design is the engineering of how electrical power is routed and delivered across a site or system, from the utility service down to the equipment it feeds. It covers service and feeder design, voltage and conductor sizing, protection, metering, and the overhead or underground infrastructure that carries the load.”
“Medium voltage generally means a nominal system voltage above 1,000 volts and up to roughly 35kV, sitting between low-voltage building power and high-voltage transmission. Most commercial and industrial distribution, utility primary service, and large-site feeders fall in this range. SLC designs medium voltage distribution up to 60kV, overhead and underground.”
“Utility coordination is the work of getting a project's electrical service designed, approved, and energized by the serving utility, including the service application, the design to the utility's standards, and the review that releases the connection.”
“A forensic electrical engineer investigates electrical failures, fires, and injuries to determine what happened and why, then documents the findings to the standard a claim or a courtroom requires. The work includes evidence examination, failure and fire-origin analysis, review of records and code, and a written report, and it often ends in deposition or trial testimony.”
“Forensic electrical engineering is the application of electrical engineering to investigate the cause of failures, fires, electrocutions, and equipment damage for legal, insurance, or safety purposes. It combines physical examination of the evidence, analysis of the electrical system, and the relevant codes and standards into a defensible conclusion about cause and responsibility.”
“Electrical failure analysis is the systematic investigation of why an electrical component, system, or installation failed, tracing the failure from its effect back to its root cause. It examines the physical evidence, the design and installation, the operating conditions, and the applicable standards to distinguish a manufacturing defect from an installation error, misuse, or normal wear.”
“Commercial EV charging cost varies widely, and it is driven less by the chargers themselves than by the site: the electrical service, how much utility upgrade the load requires, trenching and civil work, and the charger power level. A site with spare capacity costs far less than one that needs a new service.”
“EV charging station design covers the full electrical scope of a site: load calculations and capacity planning, service and panel design, conduit and feeder routing, charger layout and circuiting, metering, and the construction documents an authority having jurisdiction needs to permit the work.”
“Most commercial EV charging sites need a building and electrical permit from the local AHJ, plus a utility service application and approval for any new or upgraded service. Fleet and high-power DC sites often trigger a utility distribution study.”
“Design timelines depend less on the drawings and more on the utility. A site with adequate existing capacity can move quickly; a site that needs a service upgrade or a distribution study waits on the utility's queue.”
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