PG&E imposes blackouts on 172,000 California customers as Diablo winds raise fire risk
Hundreds of thousands of Californians have been blacked out by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. as the utility engineers another of its controversial public safety power shutoffs.
By 6 a.m. Tuesday, PG&E had darkened 172,000 homes and businesses across the Sierra foothills and Northern California wine country as strong Diablo winds ramped up the risk of wildfires.
PG&E said the winds aren’t expected to die down until Wednesday morning. Then it will take about 12 hours to inspect power lines and make repairs before power can be restored, meaning customers can expect to go without electricity until about 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Mark Quinlan, PG&E’s incident commander, said the duration of the wildfire blackouts “are really driven by the length of the wind period.”
In all, portions of 22 counties were targeted by PG&E as the National Weather Service warned of “critical fire weather conditions” and winds as strong as 55 mph. The counties affected are Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, El Dorado, Humboldt, Kern, Lake, Lassen, Mariposa, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sonoma, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne and Yuba. The blackouts in Kern County were expected to begin around 2 p.m. Tuesday.
Acknowledging the hardship to thousands of Californians, Quinlan said the shutoffs are needed to reduce fire dangers. “We don’t take that decision lightly,” he said.
Among the cities and towns affected by the PG&E blackouts: Santa Rosa, where the Tubbs Fire killed 22 people in 2017; and Paradise, where 85 people died in the 2018 Camp Fire. The Paradise fire, the deadliest in state history, drove PG&E into bankruptcy and resulted in the utility pleading guilty to felony manslaughter charges.
Other cities affected by blackouts included Placerville, Nevada City, Grass Valley and Calistoga. Several Indian reservations would be hit, too, including the Enterprise Rancheria in Yuba County and the Hoopa Valley Tribe in Humboldt County.
PG&E said it had installed 200 “sectionalizing devices” this year that enable it to narrow the geographic scope of the blackouts. It also has deployed five “micro-grid” temporary generating units to keep power flowing to groceries, gas stations and other customers along critical roads. If not for the micro-grids, another 69,000 customers would have lost power.
PG&E said it would open dozens of “community resource centers” at 8 a.m. Tuesday in the blackout areas, enabling customers to cool off in the air conditioning, get free bottled water and snacks and charge their phones. Aaron Johnson, vice president for wildfire safety, said visitors will have to wear masks and observe social distancing protocols to avoid spreading COVID-19.
The power shutoffs are the first wildfire-safety blackouts undertaken this year by PG&E, which came under intense criticism when it utility engineered a series of power shutoffs covering millions of Californians last fall.
Despite the blackouts, PG&E was blamed for sparking the giant Kincade Fire in the Geyserville area of Sonoma County after investigators determined that a mishap occurred on a transmission line that remained electrified even as the Geyserville area itself was without power.
At the time, PG&E didn’t cut power to transmission lines, which carry power in bulk to wide geographic areas and are generally far removed from tree limbs that could catch fire. But PG&E has changed its policy and Quinlan said it would to shut off 100 transmission lines Monday night.
Meanwhile, the California Independent System Operator, after narrowly averting rolling blackouts Saturday and Sunday nights, breezed through Monday’s heat wave with comparative ease, as temperatures cooled somewhat and energy demands came in below forecast.
Nonetheless, the manager of the power grid had a Flex Alert — a call for voluntary conservation that ran until 9 p.m. Monday — after warning that conditions could change at a moment’s notice and erase the margin for error.
“The concern is we have these fires, (which are) threatening to the transmission system. If we lose anything that margin disappears,” said John Phipps, the ISO’s director of real time operations.
Over the weekend, for instance, wildfires knocked a major solar farm and a hydro plant out of commission.
“It was very, very tight,” Phipps said, adding that conservation Saturday and Sunday prevented rolling blackouts like those seen in mid-August.
This story was originally published September 7, 2020 at 2:17 PM with the headline "PG&E imposes blackouts on 172,000 California customers as Diablo winds raise fire risk."