PG&E Teams Come Through for San Joaquin County Fairgrounds

As the Asparagus Festival geared up for its recent event at the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds in Stockton, legions of vegetable lovers began looking forward to deep-fried asparagus, chef demonstrations and carnival rides.

What they couldn’t see was the behind-the-scenes dash to make the festival happen following an electric outage on the customer’s equipment that would take nearly a year to fix.

By the time the outage began in February, the festival’s organizer had placed TV spots and sent direct mail advertising the event. Without power, the fairgrounds would rely on limited backup generators and the festival would have to dramatically pare back its promised exhibition booths and live events. Worse still, the fairgrounds’ packed calendar of 2025 events would be in jeopardy.

Finding a solution fell to Brad Joaquin, a Stockton native and industrial power engineer with PG&E’s Service Planning & Design team, which manages new-service connections to PG&E’s grid.

“I’ve always gone to the Asparagus Festival — it’s something the entire community takes part in,” Joaquin said. “It’s an occasion for everyone to come together, listen to live music, enjoy good food and support our agricultural businesses. I knew we had to come through for this community.”

Joaquin’s plan to get it done included constant communication and working with other PG&E teams simultaneously, rather than following a linear process through which teams get job details as different stages are finished.

A safe and fast fix

Joaquin’s first task was to figure out why the customer’s electric panel failed.

With the Engineering team, he determined that the likely culprit was an improperly sized fuse. The fuse is an electric safety device that was part of the customer-owned switchgear designed to protect the fairground’s circuits from power surges. An improperly sized fuse can allow too much electricity to flow through to and damage a panel.

Ideally, Joaquin said, the customer could order and install new switchgear and PG&E could connect the customer’s upgraded system to the grid.

But the manufacturer would need 47 weeks to build and ship the switchgear.

The delay would have devastating consequences beyond paring back the Asparagus Festival.

“The fairgrounds could lose its revenue during the peak event period in summer and fall,” Joaquin said.

So, Joaquin began working with PG&E’s Estimating, Engineering and Field Metering teams on a temporary power solution. His plan: Bypass the customer’s existing electric system by building new overhead powerlines and utility pole-mounted meters. The fix would use equipment that PG&E either had in stock or could get in about a week.

Senior engineering estimator Danny Donesa said it took Joaquin and him less than half an hour to hammer out the idea.

Rather than waiting for Estimating and Engineering to finish actual designs before looping in PG&E’s Construction and Field Metering teams, Joaquin shared the plan immediately to make sure everyone would be on the same page with the proposal. The heads-up allowed Construction to quickly begin building parts of the system in PG&E’s local service yard. It also enabled Field Metering to order specialized meter brackets as soon as possible.

“The fact that Brad was able to get us pictures, diagrams and calculations so quickly gave us a head start on ordering material and building the meters,” said Field Metering technician Mike Hangs.

Each team did what it needed to keep the project moving — without needing reminders, Joaquin said.

Hangs recalled heading into the yard one morning to see how the overhead system build was coming along — and finding it missing. The Construction team had already taken it to the fairgrounds for installation.

The Field Metering team also worked closely with the customer’s contractor to ensure customer’s work on the project met PG&E standards.

“Electric Operations went above and beyond to build this site to our standards,” Hangs said. “There were challenges, but electric crews worked diligently with Field Metering, Engineering and the customer to build this job to the highest degree of system safety.”

Joaquin began working on the job on Feb. 20. The new system was energized on April 4 — a week ahead of the Asparagus Festival’s opening. That six-week timeline included work the customer had to perform to install new utility poles.

Without the calendar-driven urgency, the job would have taken four months due to jobs already on the schedule, Joaquin said. That timeline would have included four weeks for PG&E estimating, three weeks for customer pole installation and eight weeks for construction scheduling. The teams finished faster by working afterhours, on weekends and in evenings.

‘White-glove approach’

More than any scheduling urgency, communication was the biggest key to success.

Beyond sharing information early and often with PG&E teams, Joaquin stayed in constant contact with the customer. He provided several updates a week and filled in Service Planning & Design and Construction supervisors with biweekly status reports.

It also helped that the team has worked together for years. Joaquin joined PG&E in 2006 and has served the fairgrounds ever since. Donesa has been working alongside Joaquin for 15 years. Hangs has been with the company for 25 years.

“We’ve been working together for so long, we know each other’s work style and what questions we need answered,” Donesa said. “Through his communication with customers, Brad is always on top of every job detail. He communicates well and knows what it takes to move a job forward.”

The fairgrounds will use temporary PG&E service until the new switchgear arrives later this year or in early 2026. After the customer installs the switchgear, PG&E will reestablish permanent service — and close the loop on a major effort to serve the Stockton area.

“We provide this level of service anytime we have a customer in this kind of predicament,” Joaquin said. “I look at it as a white-glove approach to customer service. It’s really about making sure we support all our customers and communities.”