But now, this wasn't about aesthetic preferences. She had crossed the line from annoying busybody to full-blown power thief.
As I stood in my driveway staring at the Tesla's humming charger, I asked her if she was serious. "You can't just plug into someone's private energy system, Karen," I said, trying to stay calm.
She looked confused, then smug. "You put it on the outside of your house," she said, as if that gave her the right. "And since we're all part of the same community, technically the energy belongs to everyone."
I was stunned by the logic. She was treating my custom-engineered system like a shared garden hose. I reminded her again that the HOA had nothing to do with my power grid. She rolled her eyes and said, "You should be grateful I'm charging clean. I'm not burning gas."
That's when I knew this was war. I didn't shout. I didn't yank the cable out or throw a fit. I just walked back inside, opened my console, and recorded the logs.
The grid showed a 73% drain from her vehicle in just over 4 hours. That was nearly a full charge, translating to dozens of dollars and wear on my battery cells. Multiply that by how many times she'd done it before without my knowledge, and the theft was no longer minor.
I pulled surveillance footage from my driveway cams. Sure enough, there she was on multiple occasions sneaking into the sideyard at night, plugging in, then casually walking away like it was a public outlet. It wasn't an accident. It was a pattern.
The next morning, I walked over to her house, knocked, and calmly explained everything again. I offered to let it go if she agreed to stop and reimburse a portion of what she had taken. I even printed the data for her.
She smirked and said, "Oh, please. You really think I'm paying you for sunlight?" Then she closed the door in my face.