A PG&E spokesperson said Wednesday that this week’s storm has caused the most outages for the utility in nearly 30 years, affecting more than 1.4 million customers since Sunday throughout its service area.
Nearly 38,000 customers in the Bay Area remained without power as of 2 p.m. Wednesday, a total that rose from about 35,000 earlier in the day. The majority of the affected customers are in the South Bay, which has more than 19,000 without power, and in the North Bay, where nearly 14,000 are without power, PG&E spokesperson Fiona Chan said.
The rise in outages coincided with another round of rain and wind that came through the region, dropping more than a half-inch of rain in parts of the Bay Area since Wednesday morning, according to the National Weather Service.
When the atmospheric river starting blowing through the region, Sunday saw the highest number of outages in a single day since the beginning of PG&E’s modern period of recording outages in 1995.
Over the past handful of days, the storm has broken or toppled more than 700 PG&E power poles and damaged hundreds of transformers, according to the utility, which has about 5,000 employees and contractors working to restore power.
The PG&E crews will have better conditions to deal with later this week. Although some showers are still possible around the Bay Area later Wednesday, dry weather is in store Thursday morning and into the weekend, according to the weather service.
18 comments
I guess all that money they are getting hasn’t helped.Can you say get rich scam.I know here comes all the excuses.They have had years to prepare.
PG@E is a public company. Its purpose is to enrich the stockholders. To them, nothing else matters.
This is just another example of why we need more providers.
While rates continue to skyrocket the product stays mediocre at best but well overpriced.
I understand that Patti Poppe needs to make her money but rate hike after rate hike is ridiculous.
Her compensation package was over $51 million
In our neighborhood, the 70 year old poles used to only have carry the “main” power and glass transformer things, with lower power lines and AT&T phone lines to our homes. Then they added cable tv, then added other phone companies, then added more, then increased size of the “mains” and huge transformers, recently sonic and AT&T fiber cables with balance weights dangling. When the poles began to weaken…about 4 or 5 years ago, instead of replacing the pole, I watched them pound in and strap 3-4 little pole (support?) spikes around the big pole and they are still there. Little 2inch pole spikes like you would use to secure a new 5 gal. tree you planted. Those poles are carrying two or three times the lines they used to have. They even had to add aother guy-wire line to that yard.
It is absolutely no wonder a medium sized lingering rain and high winds took out old tree branches and even whole neglected trees. But there is zero excuse for PG&E money grubbing and continuing to rent out unlimited pole space (and weight) on rotting and splitting 70 year poles. (the poles we paid to have them remove when they undergrounded our power~~~ I digress……..)
pge did their publicity stunt undergrounding on Kirker Pass Road.
When it was done they came back thru and chain sawed poles off above were cable TV and phone lines still running above ground.
poor upkeep of power lines The storm was a warning to PG@E
Some would argue PG&E causes the most PG&E outages.
Alphabet approach to maintenance ? ? ? ?
Should be at letter P for preventative,
yet seem to be at C for crisis . . . . .
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Freshly cherry-picked data “on record” only going back to ’95.
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It’s rather easy to explain… There are more homes in the service area.
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FAKE NEWS.
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everyone plug in their EVs! I’m sure that’ll help.
Just think of all the electric car owners who were not able to charge their cars when the power was off for 1, 2, 3 days and were stuck in place.
Ha Ha Ha
Can’t charge your electric car?
Don’t you feel superior now eh greenies? Climate change…the sky is falling. Chicken Little was right!
PG&E Propaganda, Gouging, Excessive
And yet it cost more each month than it ever has! Hmmmm….what exactly are we paying for? Uninterrupted service? Apparently not! More like padding the pockets of the bigwigs!
The sky is falling, the sky is falling. Quick give them more money they will protect you if you give them more money. You know, like the mafia
Freezing weather electric vehicle range extender.
https://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2024/02/gotta-maximize-that-range.html
Someone needs to write a best seller on the dark history of PG&E, a company that goes back to before California was even a state (they were selling gas to light houses back then). Should be some juicy bits there.😎
Don’t know if that’s solely because of the storm or a combination of a so-so storm and a LOT of deferred maintenance. My sense it’s the latter.
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