2,000 homes and businesses in Northern California go dark in PG&E first safety shutoff of year

Daniel Hunt
·4 min read
9

Nearly 2,000 ratepayers of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. were in the dark Tuesday, cut off from the electricity grid after the utility implemented its first public safety power shutoff of the year amid hot, dry and windy conditions across Northern California ripe for possible wildfires.

According to data provided by PG&E to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, the deliberate outages began just before 12:30 a.m. Tuesday. Shutoffs were ordered in eight of the 10 Northern California counties that PG&E said could be affected by the so-called PSPS outages. However, the number of customers affected was about a sixth of the 12,000 or so homes and businesses PG&E said could have been under the PSPS.

As of noon, these counties are affected:

  • Butte, 314 customers

  • Colusa, 26

  • Lake, 187

  • Napa, 18

  • Solano, 130

  • Sonoma, 17

  • Tehama, 1,179

  • Yolo, 303

In total, 1,986 homes and businesses were severed from the grid in an effort to prevent PG&E equipment from potentially starting a fire. PG&E officials stressed “only a portion of a county may experience a PSPS event.” In addition, outages not related to the PSPS were happening Tuesday morning in Arbuckle (556 customers) and in Petaluma (2,154).

“Due to favorable weather conditions, PG&E has delayed the start of the planned PSPS event for approximately 10,000 additional customers — mostly in Glenn and Shasta counties,” PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno said in an update. “PG&E is continually monitoring weather conditions and will update those customers on the status of the PSPS event for their area.”

In its Tuesday weather update, the utility’s forecasters were particularly concerned about wind gusts in Butte County, through the North Bay regions and along the western tier of the Sacramento Valley. PG&E meteorologists said gusts had topped 63 mph in Sonoma County with lesser winds in Napa (42 mph). Winds more than 100 miles away in Butte County topped 49 mph after midnight and strong gusts were observed in Colusa County (47 mph) and Solano County (40).

“The winds are expected to taper off near mid-day into the evening,” forecasters said. “Before a second period of wind risk re-develops overnight tonight from midnight through 10 a.m. Wednesday.”

That means many of the same areas could be without power through at least Wednesday evening or into Thursday as most of Northern California bakes in extreme temperatures and a red flag warning for high fire danger. PG&E has previously said that restoring power to affected customers would likely take 12 daylight hours for inspection once the weather “all clear” is given.

Karly Hernandez, a PG&E spokeswoman, said the utility would open several “community resource centers” Tuesday in the blackout areas, enabling customers to cool off in the air conditioning, get free bottled water and snacks and charge their phones. PG&E mapping indicated those centers would be open beginning at 8 a.m. Tuesday at the following locations:

Sacramento is expected to top 109 degrees with some spots such as Redding reaching 111 degrees Tuesday — hotter temperatures are expected Wednesday during the heat wave that’s predicted to last through Sunday. Sweltering conditions can lead to sagging power lines and overheated transformers, creating concerns for utilities like PG&E and others not affected by the shutoffs, such as the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and city-owned providers such as Roseville Electric.

“Although the risk of PSPS ends Wednesday afternoon due to lack of stronger winds, the fire potential will remain escalated due to the very dry and hot conditions,” PG&E forecasters noted.

The utility also said that the majority of its circuits equipped with so-called enhanced powerline safety settings, a feature that makes the equipment fault quicker amid dangerous conditions, were activated. The utility had switched 10% more of the circuits to this newer feature since Sunday evening, it said.

Utility blamed equipment sparking wildfires

PG&E in recent years has imposed planned power shutoffs in the face of dire wildfire weather. The utility company’s equipment has been blamed for sparking some of the worst fires in state history, including the 2018 Camp Fire that devastated Paradise, and PG&E Corp. has been found liable for billions of dollars worth of destruction.

The utility since 2017 has been blamed for starting more than 30 wildfires, blazes that destroyed more than 23,000 homes and businesses and has killed more than 100 people.

Last year, the company engineered two PSPS events out of four possible scenarios the company identified, according to company filings to the California Public Utilities Commission. The late August and mid-September events took roughly 5,200 customers off the grid.

More information on the PSPS and how to get alerts are available on PG&E website.