Update: Hundreds still without power as second large outage reported along North Coast
Update, 2 p.m.:
A second large power outage cut off power to 738 customers in the Cambria area on Wednesday afternoon.
According to PG&E’s outage map, neighborhoods along Main Street and west of Highway 1 were without electricity starting at about 1 p.m.
The cause of the outage is being determined, but like the earlier outage still impacting residents between Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo, the Cambria outage was in an area that is on a circuit with Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings.
Power is expected to be restored to the area by 8 p.m.
Update, 12:40 p.m.:
Cuesta College classes have been canceled for the day due to the outage at the San Luis Obispo campus.
Classes online and on the North County Campus are unaffected, according to a college news release.
Original story:
About 370 customers were without power in San Luis Obispo County as of midday Wednesday.
According to PG&E’s outage map, two outages were impacting customers in the area.
One, caused by “an emergency issue,” knocked out electricity for 87 customers along Highway 41 northeast of Morro Bay around 10 a.m. Power was expected to be restored there around 2 p.m., according to PG&E.
A second, larger outage was impacting 290 customers along Highway 1 between Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo, including Cuesta College.
The community college sent out an alert at 10:30 a.m. saying the campus was without power.
PG&E spokesman Mark Mesesan said the company was experiencing six outages throughout the Central Coast on Wednesday, possibly due to strong winds.
Mesesan said as of 12:30 p.m., the company had not yet identified the cause of the outage at Cuesta College, but noted the outage occurred on a circuit with Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings.
“This is not a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS), where we turn off power following notification to our customers in extreme weather and ground conditions to keep our equipment from igniting a wildfire,” Mesesan said in an email to The Tribune. “EPSS is a similar system enhancement designed to keep our equipment from starting a wildfire, but it is automatically triggered to turn off certain circuits in high-fire-threat areas when the system senses a fault.”
Mesesan said in those cases, crews must patrol the entire circuit before restoring power to prevent a fault that could potentially spark a wildfire.
Power was expected to be restored to the area around 1:30 p.m.
This story was originally published April 6, 2022 at 12:01 PM.
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