PG&E restores power to nearly all customers after latest shutoff
PG&E gave the weather “all clear” Thursday morning, and restored power for more than 50,000 customers affected by Wednesday’s shutoff across parts of Northern California.
The go-ahead to end the so-called public safety power shutoff was issued at 2 a.m. Thursday as Wednesday’s winds eased, and all customers are expected to be restored “by tonight or sooner,” PG&E said in a statement shortly after 8 a.m.
The blackouts hit customers in portions of 11 counties: Napa, Sonoma, Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Mendocino, Shasta, Solano, Tehama and Yolo. By 5 p.m., nearly all of the 51,036 homes and businesses were restored with roughly 546 customers still without power.
The deliberate shutoff started by PG&E Wednesday morning, which earlier in the week had been expected to black out more than 300,000 homes and businesses, ultimately ended up impacting about 50,000 customers, the utility company says.
About 10,000 of those customers had their power back by 6 a.m. Thursday, including about about 4,800 from parts of Napa and Sonoma counties who had it restored by 6 p.m. Wednesday, PG&E said in a news releases.
PG&E says winds over 50 mph were recorded “in most of these counties, including wind speeds over 70 mph in Sonoma County,” according to its overnight update. The National Weather Service Sacramento office, in a peak wind report issued Wednesday evening, confirmed that winds approached or exceeded 50 mph in several Northern California counties, including Butte, Lake and Shasta. The NWS report did not include Sonoma County.
PG&E says it had 45 helicopters and 5,500 employees working to perform the visual inspections it requires before reactivating power. Restoration activities can only be done during daylight hours, PG&E has said.
The latest PSPS event by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. began Wednesday morning, as weather forecasts called for increased wildfire risk due to severe winds and dry conditions across wide swaths of Northern California. PG&E on Monday gave 300,000 customers a 48-hour notice of the possible shutoff.
The estimated size fluctuated and the impacted areas were altered a few times before PG&E finally confirmed it would be shutting off power, this time to an estimated total of 150,000 customers in 18 counties.
Those numbers remained the official estimates as the shutoffs began in phases around 7 a.m. Wednesday, starting with the North Bay area.
Then, right around noon, shortly after a few counties had reported to their residents that PG&E was delaying the start of the outages by at least three hours, the utility announced that power would stay on for 83,000 of those customers in parts of Placer, El Dorado, Nevada and several other foothill counties due to “evolving weather” conditions. Later in the afternoon, PG&E removed from its shutoff list another 6,800 customers from parts of Tehama, Butte and Yuba counties.
The total customer count ended up being significantly smaller than PG&E’s four mass blackout events in October, all of which left hundreds of thousands of homes and business in the dark.
But this week’s shutoff nonetheless caught the ire of Northern Californians. In places like Nevada County, classes were canceled across all major public school districts due to a power outage that was set to start at 7 a.m., but never happened at all.
PG&E spokeswoman Brandi Merlo on Wednesday said the utility understands customers’ frustration, but the company has an obligation to keep safe from wildfires.
This story was originally published November 21, 2019 at 7:33 AM.
