6 ms·
I read and article on here some months ago titled something like "Leftist usecases for LLMs" and one of them was negotiating bureaucracies, and that reminds me,
by Jgrubb 14d ago
I read and article on here some months ago titled something like "Leftist usecases for LLMs" and one of them was negotiating bureaucracies, and that reminds me, I need to call back JCP&L about my Board of Public Utilities complaint that an LLM helped me out together.
You see, I live with in a rural area and especially since LED light bulbs have become the thing, it's been clear that we are delivered far less than 120v service a lot of the time. We live about 200 yards from the transformer that we share with several other houses, too many I believe. About two years ago I set up Home Assistant and bought one of those power monitoring rigs that you put on each circuit in your breaker box, mostly I just wanted data about where my power bill money was going. I work in FinOps in case anyone was curious.
Anyhoo, couple years later I'm analyzing several months worth of power bills vs the circuit meter readings to quantify where I can make some upgrades and save some money. After a day or so of this I mention to Claude about the voltage issues and sure enough, it puts together a whole packet for me documenting brownouts down to 95v and routine brownouts below 110v. It helps me fill out the BPU complaint form.
2 days later I get a call from JCP&L (unfortunately to my wife's phone because it's her name as the primary on the account). I want a new, larger transformer for myself and my neighbors, so I need to call them back today.
- bigfishrunning 14d agoIf you were monitoring the power coming into your house, why did you need claude to "put together a whole packet documenting brownouts"? Shouldn't you just have the raw data, maybe highlighted with the offending parts? Or was the prose of your complaint the issue?
- throwaway173738 14d agoFrequently you have to mention specific laws and describe how your situation matches the law or your complaints get ignored. At least this is how it works when you call your insurance company and make similar complaints.
- bluGill 14d agoThere is still a lot of work to take the raw data and put it into a useful format. LLMs are really good at that (when they don't hallucinate data).
- Jgrubb 14d agoThis. Putting together a complaint in the language of a electricity service professional(?) with proper citations etc.
- Jgrubb 14d agoIn short, a rock solid data analysis artifact takes a lot longer than just running the queries.
- quickthrowman 14d agoHow big is the transformer and how many residences are sharing it? It’s probably stencil painted on the enclosure. I’ve seen half a dozen houses on a single 7.2kV -> 240V 25kva transformer which can lead to problems given the available current on the secondary side is only 104A. As the transformer overheats you get voltage drop, as you’ve noticed ;) Your supply voltage should be +/- 5% of nominal, 115-125V line to neutral and 230-250V line to line, appliances are generally OK with +/- 10% from nominal voltage.
- Jgrubb 14d agoI don't know "how big", but I do know that it's a 7.2kV line, and that there are 6 houses on it, and that mine is pretty far away while the other houses are quite close to the transformer. Like I said, it routinely drops to or below 100v. It's most noticeable after an outage is restored when everyone's hot water heaters and fridges kick back on at once.