PG&E’s CEO says outages in future
Weather: Dry, windy conditions key to when utility cuts power again
As the lights came back on across much of Northern California on Friday, one question loomed for many blackoutfatigued residents: When will PG&E shut off the power again?
The widely criticized utility has acknowledged problems with how it rolled out this week’s massive planned outage, noting that it didn’t always communicate the timing of the shutoffs adequately and suggesting it would reevaluate whether the power cuts were too broad.
“A future of power shutoffs is not a future I desire to live through,” said utility CEO Bill Johnson, addressing reporters Friday evening at the company’s San Francisco headquarters. “But it’s a future we must be ready for, given the conditions and the risks we face.”
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has not backed away from the importance of the blackouts for
fire safety, and weather forecasters say more windy conditions like the ones that led to the latest outage may be coming — as soon as late next week.
“This isn’t necessarily a oneshot deal what happened over the past two or three days,” said Brent Wachter, a fire meteorologist at the Northern California Geographic Area Coordination Center in Redding, a joint operation of federal, state and local governments. “We’re definitely not out of the woods.”
Forecasting models show that strong inland winds, common in the fall, could whip up again next weekend while the weather across most of the state remains dry. Meteorologists say a ridge of highpressure air is setting up over the Pacific Ocean, which often has the effect of blocking rainstorms and doing little to reduce the fire hazard in the face of autumn gusts.
“What I see is that we’re under a pattern in which a series of systems, generally dry and coming out of Alaska, continue the potential of northerly wind events through the rest of October and perhaps into November,” Wachter said. “This puts almost the entire state back into fullfledged fire season.”
In Southern California, firefighters this week began facing off with the budding Saddle Ridge Fire, which has prompted more than 100,000 people to evacuate just north of Los Angeles. At least 25 homes burned.
PG&E officials said Friday they have no immediate plans to initiate another widespread outage, though they said proactive shutoffs may be necessary this fall as well as long into the future.
“Particularly this time of year … it will continue to be one of the tools,” said utility spokesman Jeff Smith.
For the company, the decision of whether to shut off electricity to hundreds of thousands of customers has been a matter of weighing the cost and inconvenience of a blackout against the risk of a catastrophic wildfire. PG&E’s equipment has been blamed for igniting many of the deadly infernos over the past two years, including the Camp Fire in Butte County that killed 85 people.
In the wake of the fires, the utility has begun strengthening its electrical infrastructure to make it less likely to spark and ignite a blaze. For example, power lines are being run underground, wires are being better insulated and wooden poles are being swapped out with fireproof beams. However, making the improvements across the company’s 70,000squaremile service area will take years, if not decades, meaning power shutoffs are not likely to go away soon.
As the upgrades move forward, PG&E officials said they hope to be able to finetune the outages and cut power to smaller areas and fewer people. A little reengineering of the grid could make it so that the company doesn’t have to turn off one major transmission line and put everyone along it in the dark. Other utilities, such as San Diego Gas and Electric, routinely perform more surgical power cutoffs in times of high fire danger.
On Friday, PG&E reported that 34 of the 35 counties that experienced an outage were cleared for the process of returning power. Before the electricity was turned on, though, crews were inspecting lines to find and fix wind damage.
By 9 p.m. 97% of customers’ electricity had been restored statewide — 99% in the Bay Area. Twentyone thousand accountholders statewide remained in the dark.
A few factors slowed the recovery, said Sameet Singh, vice president of PG&E’s community wildfire safety program. Winds in the Sierra foothills and Kern County continued into Friday afternoon, hindering workers’ ability to do safety inspections. Helicopters are also restricted in the northern foothills, and crews have to traverse rugged terrain to check the lines.
During the outages, which began early Wednesday as strong winds took hold, a total of 738,000 households and businesses were stripped of electricity. An estimated 2 million people were impacted.
The shutoff was, by far, PG&E’s biggest since the company announced the fire prevention strategy after the Wine Country firestorm in 2017.
Economists have estimated that losses for residents and businesses could top $1 billion. PG&E’s share price slid 29% on Thursday before remaining mostly flat Friday.
Hilary Roberts, a 67yearold professor who has lived in Berkeley for 33 years, said having to cut off power to maintain fire safety doesn’t seem like something a First World nation should have to do.
“I don’t want to live like that. Because of the irresponsibility of the utility company, we have to completely alter our lifestyle?” she said. “I don’t want that to be the new normal.”
Questions about whether the outage led to a man’s death were answered Friday by the El Dorado County Sheriff ’s Office, which said an autopsy showed the man died of severe coronary artery atherosclerosis and that the outage was not to blame. The 67yearold Pollock Pines man breathed with the help of an oxygen tank and died 12 minutes after power was cut Wednesday.
With 44 helicopters in the air and 6,300 people on the ground surveying electrical equipment, PG&E officials said Friday evening that they found more than 30 instances of weatherrelated damage across their system. They said it was possible that a fire could have started if the lines had been live.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday that his top concern was getting power restored to residents but that he was evaluating the merit of the shutoffs and how they played out.
“We’re all leaning into this space and we’re all trying to assess the facts and the protocols about what went right, what went wrong, how can we avoid the circumstance in the future at this kind of scale,” he said after a billsigning ceremony at the Capitol.
A day earlier, Johnson acknowledged the utility was “not adequately prepared” for such a largescale power outage.
After the first wave of shutoffs launched on schedule in the early morning hours Wednesday, the company delayed the second phase of shutoffs for a day, causing confusion and sometimes unnecessary trouble. Schools and universities were closed, businesses hauled off perishables and families stockpiled ice only to learn that they had not needed to.
Kensington resident Lauren Tyler, who lost power Wednesday evening and regained it Thursday afternoon, isn’t looking forward to more outages, but at least she’s prepared.
She estimates that this week she spent $2,600 on solar panels and a backup lithium ion battery to keep her refrigerator and internet running. She also bought a new fire extinguisher and smoke alarm.
“The whole thing is a palpable reminder to be prepared for all emergencies,” she said. “I've been meaning for a long time to make sure that I was prepared.”