[RFI] pleasant surprise today from Solar Edge

[Hare, Ed W1RFI]

It is far from that simple, Cortland.  "Enforcement" is a very broad term that can range from the advisory letters routinely mailed by the FCC in response to complaints about harmful interference to the very rare "real" enforcement actions such as a Citation or a Forfeiture.  There are a lot of reasons for the "reluctance."  Let me talk about this under the  umbrella of our arrangement with the FCC regarding interference to amateur radio.

The FCC can and does send advisory letters to companies or individuals alleged to be causing harmful interference. This can be done under the authority of FCC staff, such as Laura Smith, with no higher-level approvals needed.  To do so, however, the FCC staffer must reasonable believe that the interference meets the criteria for harmful interference, that reasonable efforts were made to resolve the interference directly and that the correct source has been identified.  In cases involving amateur radio, this is easy for the FCC because they ask ARRL to help make those determinations, which W1VLF does with a really good track record. The FCC has sent out hundreds of these letters, so I'd hardly use the word "reluctance" to describe the overall program.

The FCC can and does sent out advisory letters based on a reasonable report. It cannot, however, take any further enforcement action based solely on a report. It needs its own finding of fact, by FCC staff, that a rules violation is taking place.  This typically would mean that the interference problem needs to be investigated by an agent of the FCC field office.  This crosses departmental boundaries within the FCC, making this a bit more difficult to set into motion.  It also does require approval higher up the FCC chain than a staff-level person writing and advisory letter.  The FCC has but back on field offices immensely, so it generally does not sent agents out for anything less than interference to emergency communications or critical infrastructure.  This may mean that if the Enforcement Bureau is able to refer a case, the field office is more than likely going to say that it will investigate that amateur case the next time it is in the area for another reason, if time is available.  I, too, am reluctant to want to send cases to the field, knowing the inordinate delays that are to be expected.  The FCC EB staff share the same feeling; they really do want to resolve cases, and the field-agent option is not the most efficient and effective way to do that.  It is not a reluctance of wanting to fix problems; it is a reluctance of not wanting to drop cases into a hole that they sometimes never come out of, even though doing so would get a case off of their plate and onto someone else's.  The reputation of the FCC EB staff as bureaucrats is very much unwarranted and they are not reluctant at all.

Neither are MOST of the field agents, from my experience, although I have run across a few that seem to fit the "bureaucrat" description.   So, reluctance is not really generally the issue with the field offices, either. Many of them share our frustration that they do not have the resources to do what they want to do, which is to resolve cases.   But it gets a bit murkier.  In my experience, there is a wide range of ability in the skill set of the field-office agents.  I have seen some not able to find an S9 noise source, to proclaim that there is noise, but it is general in nature, so it is not harmful interference as defined by its rules.  That really happened involving as utility in Texas.  In another case, an agent identified over 50 noise sources and told an electric utility to fix them all.   This, too, was a case in Texas -- the same case as the first, just with a different agent.  If there is "reluctance" to send cases into that uncertain environment, that is very appropriate and in part promoted by ARRL not wanting to see cases deemed not to be harmful interference because once that determination is made, it can be a tremendous amount of work to get it changed.

Last on this list comes "real" enforcement.  If all of the hurdles described above have been cleared, the FCC can move to an actual enforcement action.  This is not approved at the staff level, nor by senior management of the FCC, but goes all the way to the FCC Commission itself.  Naturally, this is not an easy task, as the documentation must be impeccable and written in a way that the less-technical people on the Commission can understand it. Even at that, the action taken by the Commission is often going to be very much influenced by politics, even if in a bipartisan way.  Even I have reluctance about trying to send cases into that crap-shoot environment, as should every ham reading this.

For these reasons, it is always FAR better to try to resolve cases locally, without the help of the FCC EB staff.  If the EB staff do get involved, it is generally much better to work with the responsible parties than to be in any rush to send cases to field offices and then, if unresolved, onto the Commission.  Even that first letter from the FCC may get the company lawyer involved, which has been known to put an end to any cooperation at the company's staff level.  ARRL then has the difficult task of convincing the company lawyer that ARRL is not looking for anything other than fixing the problem and that if the problem is fixed, ARRL expects that the case will be closed without further action.  I don't want these companies to think that the FCC is "reluctant" do to enforcement. I do want them to think that actual FCC enforcement is a nightmare for ALL parties involved, so the best approach is to resolve a problem through mutual cooperation and use what is learned to make equipment and process improvements that make it far less likely that there will be interference in the future.

Ed Hare, W1RFI
ARRL Lab




-----Original Message-----
From: RFI <rfi-bounces+w1rfi=arrl.org at contesting.com> On Behalf Of Cortland Richmond
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2020 11:27 PM
To: rfi at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [RFI] pleasant surprise today from Solar Edge

Our problem in such cases is still the Commission's reluctance to enforce the rules against causing harmful interference regardless of the maximum permitted level of emissions.

I note that Class A ballasts are still being sold without even a label they're not to be used in residences.

Cortland, KA5S


On 9/24/2020 10:50 AM, Hare, Ed W1RFI wrote:
> We have come a long way, but still have a ways to go. Fortunately, we are dealing with a company that is holding space for all of this and willing to work towards better and better solutions.
>
> The initial installations were pretty bad.  They simply ran a single wire between anything that was series strung, which formed a giant loop.  The FCC rules on emission control ONLY conducted emissions ON THE AC MAINS, so any noise present on that loop did not have a specific limit.  So, the early systems complied with the letter of the law.FCC has rarely been required to even assess an individual circumstance as harmful interference, and when it has, that assessment has been all over the map.  I do know they will consider the level of interference, the frequency occupancy, a comparison of that level to median values of man-made noise (typically S6+ on lower bands, btw...), whether the amateur can make use of frequency agility, how often it occurs, time of day and possibly even the phase of the moons orbiting Saturn.
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