Regulators Launch New Probe of Blackouts Imposed by PG&E and Other Major Utilities

State regulators responding to widespread concern over "public safety" blackouts imposed by the state's major power utilities last month voted Wednesday to launch a formal investigation of how the blackouts were conducted.

The five-member California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously to launch the inquiry, which will look at how the big utilities — PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — planned for and executed the public safety power shutoffs, also called PSPS events.

"These sustained PSPS events cannot be the new normal for California," CPUC Chair Marybel Batjer said before the vote. "The frequency and scope of the PSPS events of 2019 impacted communities and in a profound way. It is imperative we do more to mitigate wildfire risk and reduce the use of PSPS in the future."

The heaviest scrutiny is likely to fall on PG&E, which cut power to 975,000 customers in the most widespread of four October shutoffs. The blackouts were vast compared to those imposed by SCE, which shut down power to 86,000 customers in its most extensive outage, and SDG&E, which cut electricity to about 24,000 customers in its biggest shutdown.

The PG&E blackouts turned off the lights in whole counties for days at a time, disrupted cellular communications in some places, forced Caltrans and other public agencies to deploy emergency generators to keep facilities like the Caldecott Tunnel and major water systems operational and caused economic losses that some have estimated to be in the billions of dollars.

The CPUC's vote came a day after the agency warned PG&E it faces fines for a series of lapses in its planning and execution of the October shutoffs.

In an "order to show cause" issued Tuesday, the commission charged that the blackouts violated state law and two sets of CPUC regulations, including one that dictates that public safety power shutoffs be undertaken only as "a last resort."

Citing PG&E's own report of missteps it committed during an Oct. 9-12 outage that affected 729,000 customers in 35 counties, the order said the company failed to keep its website online during the blackout; failed to notify 23,000 of the affected customers they would lose power; did not properly coordinate with local governments and tribal communities prior to and during the PSPS event; and did not take account of how the outage would impact key infrastructure throughout its service territory to identify where backup power would be necessary.

"The impact of PG&E’s failure to effectively communicate with its customers and to properly coordinate with local governments demonstrate that
its actions to implement the power shutoffs were ill-conceived, poorly planned, uncoordinated (both internally and externally) and ineffectively communicated," the order said.