PG&E says power is restored for 95% of customers and no shut-offs are planned — for now
Utility PG&E has restored power to nearly all customers affected in the recent Saturday and Tuesday shutoffs — with no additional outages planned for now.
By midday Thursday, more than 1 million customers in Northern California had been restored to power since Saturday, leaving about 37,000 customers still in the dark.
About 328,255 customers were restored throughout Wednesday and Thursday after the utility issued a weather “all- clear” for all counties except Kern, which was cleared later Thursday morning.
PG& E began safety inspections again during daylight hours Thursday across Calaveras, Colusa, El Dorado, Kern, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, Nevada, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Sonoma and Yuba counties.
The utility said that “many” of those counties had reached 90% restoration by midday Thursday.
The number of customers affected in Tuesday’s public safety power shutoff shrank significantly from the 540,000 that the utility first projected. In the Bay Area, Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties were spared from Tuesday’s shutoffs completely at the last minute, along with Humboldt and Siskiyou counties.
Tuesday’s event marked PG& E’s fourth shutoff in October amid strong winds and fire danger across the region. Before Tuesday’s shutoffs kicked off, some 400,000 customers remained without power from Saturday’s event.
Restoration has been slowed in part by instances of weather-related damage to equipment, PG&E has said, which lengthens the time for inspecting and securing of lines.
Since Saturday’s shut-off, the utility has identified at least 143 instances of weather-related damage to its equipment.
The list of counties that have been fully restored includes: Alameda,
Alpine, Amador, Butte, Colusa, Contra Costa, Fresno, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Madera, Mariposa, Mendocino, Monterey, San Benito, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Siskiyou, Solano,
Stanislaus, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne and Yolo.
Because of blunders by PG& E in connection with the first massive power shutdown that started Oct. 9, customers who were forced to endure planned electricity cutoffs during that event can expect to see automatic credits on their PG& E bills, a process that will occur over the next few months.
Customers whose electricity was intentionally shut off during the event Oct. 9-12 are eligible for the rebates — but customers affected by other electricity shutdowns, including the two most recent ones, won’t be in line for refunds, PG&E said.