PG&E Tells 200,000 Customers to Prepare for More Planned Outages

by | Oct 22, 2019

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PG&E Tells 200,000 Customers to Prepare for More Planned Outages

Dry and windy conditions prompted Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) to begin notifying around 209,000 customers in California about a possible public safety power shutoff late Wednesday evening.

PG&E says that the potential safety shutoff is planned for varying start times and could affect parts of 15 counties in the Sierra Foothills and the North Bay. Customer notifications via text, email, and automated phone call began on Monday, according to the utility.

“The sole purpose of PSPS is to significantly reduce catastrophic wildfire risk to our customers and communities,” said Michael Lewis, senior vice president of PG&E Electric Operations. “We know that sustained winds above 45 mph are known to cause damage to the lower-voltage distribution system and winds above 50 mph are known to cause damage to higher-voltage transmission equipment.”

Earlier this month, 738,000 customers in 35 counties experienced planned shutoffs. Last week California Governor Gavin Newsom sent a letter to PG&E criticizing the utility for the scope and duration of the outages. He called attention to long call center wait times, PG&E’s website crashes, and urged the utility to issue credits or rebates to small business customers.

California Public Utilities Commission president Marybel Batjer summoned the utility’s leadership to a packed emergency regulatory meeting last Friday. The Mercury News reported that CEO William Johnson told the PUC it could take a decade for the utility to improve its electric system to the point where these planned shutdowns become unnecessary.

“What we saw play out from PG&E cannot be repeated,” Batjer said during the hearing, according to the newspaper. “PG&E was not fully prepared.”

The utility announced on Monday that customers are being redirected to a PG&E website that can accommodate high volumes of traffic, and that its call center would be better able to manage increased call volume, with priority given to emergency, outage, and PSPS-related inquiries.

“State officials classify more than half of PG&E’s 70,000-square-mile service area in Northern and Central California as having a high fire threat, given dry grasses and the high volume of dead and dying trees,” the utility said. “The state’s high-risk areas have tripled in size in seven years.”

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