From EVs to the PowerHouse, Coworker's 40-Year Career Has Been Ahead of the Curve

When PG&E’s PowerHouse officially came to life, the home buzzed with conversation, screens glowed, and new technology quietly simulated power turning back on thanks to bidirectional charging. Standing nearby was Al Beliso, not giving a speech, not drawing attention. He nodded, taking it all in.

For Beliso, a technologist at PG&E, the PowerHouse didn’t arrive overnight. It arrived 40 years in the making.

Colleagues agree that Beliso's work through decades has been driven by one simple idea: always start with the customer.

“When you work backwards from the customer, it’s all about the customer,” said Fred Skillman, Al’s supervisor at PG&E’s Applied Technology Services (ATS) center in San Ramon. “Albert is always extremely focused on the mission and the deliverable.”

That mission has defined Beliso's four-decade career at PG&E, recognized this week when CEO Patti Poppe personally gave Beliso a shout‑out at an all-coworker meeting to celebrate his 40 years of service.

Beliso’s steady presence is rooted in both family and heritage. Raised with strong ties to Hawaii and the Philippines, he grew up learning the importance of community, responsibility, and showing up for the long haul.

He and his wife, Nancy Evangelista, who recently retired from PG&E, raised seven children and now have eight grandchildren. Today, their son Nick Evangelista and daughter Alana Beliso work alongside him at ATS. That continuity shows up in a photo taken after the PowerHouse launch: Beliso and his wife sitting close together, grounded, smiling, the strength behind a lifetime of work.

Early work on EVs

Beliso’s path started in Bakersfield with document writing, land work, and surveying. This foundation shaped an engineer who understands not just how systems work, but how people rely on them.

Long before electric vehicles went mainstream, Beliso was already deep in the work. In the early 1990s, he helped install some of the Bay Area’s first EV charging stations, worked with BART, and converted early electric vehicles, including a Toyota Prius and a RAV4.

In 2006, Beliso even worked on the original Tesla Roadster in San Carlos, collaborating on early EV integration. While the industry debated whether EVs would matter, Beliso was already helping build the infrastructure to support them.

Over the years, Beliso has built expertise across electrical, mechanical, nuclear, and hydraulic systems, along with cutting-edge work in grid planning, power plant performance, superconducting magnetic energy storage and cryogenic inverters.

“He’s probably the longest serving technologist in the state,” Skillman said. “A master of all trades.”

Jason Pretzlaf, a longtime colleague at ATS, put it another way: “Al is an artist. You give him an abstract idea, and he comes back with a masterpiece — every time.”

That blend of creativity and customer focus flows directly into the PowerHouse.

“The PowerHouse exists to give customers cleaner energy, more control over their bills, and resilience when the grid is stressed,” Beliso said.

The PG&E PowerHouse is where PG&E and its partners test, integrate, and validate clean energy technologies, including bidirectional electric vehicle (EV) charging, smart electric panels and meters, heat pumps, battery energy storage, and induction cooking. The goal is to help reduce cost, complexity, and uncertainty for customers interested in electrification.

The site will now serve as a long‑term demonstration and learning space for tours, showcases, partner collaborations, and community engagement focused on the future of electric living.

Long before the Powerhouse had a name, Beliso was already building it: one idea, one customer, one generation at a time.