An electrical engineer who has designed utility substations and lines, for disputes on the utility side of the meter.
Party names are what the check runs against. Nothing privileged is requested.
Most electrical experts built their careers inside buildings. Disputes involving a utility's lines, substations, or protection systems turn on a different body of practice: the National Electrical Safety Code and, in California, CPUC General Orders 95, 128, and 165, along with utility design standards, relay settings, and operating procedures.
Ohm Forensics is retained by counsel, carriers, and owners when the electrical question sits on the utility side of the service point, or at the interconnection between a utility and a customer's plant.
Contact incidents involving cranes, ladders, trees, and vehicles, with conductor clearance, sag, and guarding evaluated against the NESC and General Order 95.
Conductor, splice, connector, and hardware failures, and whether the protection system should have detected and cleared the fault.
In wildfire and structure fire matters, analysis of the utility's conductors, protection settings, reclosers, and fault records. We address how the electrical system behaved. We do not determine fire origin, and we work alongside the origin and cause investigator.
Transformer, breaker, switchgear, and relay failures, including protection misoperation, maintenance history, and event reconstruction from relay and SCADA data.
Open neutrals, overvoltage, surges, and outages that damage customer equipment, including where the utility's facilities end and the customer's begin.
Interconnection studies, upgrade cost allocation, delay claims, and EPC disputes for solar, storage, and large load projects.
Examination of the line, structure, or substation equipment and any retained components under a joint protocol. Requests go out early for the records that age out first: relay event files, SCADA and outage logs, recloser counters, and patrol and inspection records.
Fault current and protection analysis, reconstruction of the event sequence from relay and recloser data, clearance and loading checks, and comparison of design, construction, and maintenance with the NESC, the applicable General Orders, and the utility's own standards.
A written report that states the method, the data relied on, and the basis for each opinion, so every conclusion can be traced and defended under Rule 702 and Daubert or the state equivalent. Where a preliminary oral opinion is all you need, the work stops there.
Deposition and trial testimony that explains the engineering in plain language. We also prepare rebuttal analysis of opposing expert reports and cross-examination outlines for counsel.
Our principal engineer began his career in utility substation engineering, working on substation projects for two of California's largest investor-owned utilities at voltages from 4 kV to 345 kV. He later served in a utility owner's engineering role and as a senior substation engineer for hyperscale data center campuses.
That work covered breaker-and-a-half and ring bus arrangements, protection and coordination, grounding, and the interconnection of utility-scale solar and storage. It is the reason we can read a relay event file, a protection settings sheet, or a utility construction standard the way the utility's own engineers do. Prior utility relationships are disclosed during the conflict check, before anything else happens.
No. Fire origin and cause belongs to a certified fire investigator. Our work is the electrical side: whether the utility's conductors, equipment, or protection system behaved in a way that is consistent with ignition, what the fault and recloser records show, and whether design, construction, and maintenance met the applicable standards.
It depends on the jurisdiction and the facility. The National Electrical Safety Code applies in most states. In California, CPUC General Orders 95, 128, and 165 address overhead construction, underground construction, and inspection. The utility's own design, construction, and maintenance standards often become part of the analysis as well, because they show what the utility itself considered necessary.
Relay event and oscillography files, SCADA and outage management logs, recloser and breaker operation records, protection settings and coordination studies, inspection, patrol, and vegetation records, maintenance history for the equipment involved, and the circuit's prior outage history. Some of this data is overwritten on a rolling basis, so an early preservation letter matters.
That background is the source of the expertise. Conflicts are checked matter by matter against the party names you provide, and any prior relationship is disclosed to you before engagement so you can weigh it. Matters are accepted on either side.
No engagement, no cost. If we are conflicted or this is not the right discipline for your question, we will say so.