PG&E Plans Power Outages for San Francisco Neighborhoods Hit by Major Blackout

PG&E will cut power to two San Francisco neighborhoods next week to finalize repairs to the Mission District substation damaged by a major fire last month, causing an unprecedented, widespread blackout.

The first planned outage will begin Monday after midnight in the Civic Center area and could last up to 12 hours, affecting about 3,600 customers. PG&E said power should be restored by noon at the latest.

The second outage, which will occur on Tuesday shortly after midnight, will affect about 14,000 customers in the Richmond District and will last around two hours.

The massive unplanned outage the weekend before Christmas knocked out power for more than 130,000 city residents across wide swaths of the city, snarling traffic and transit and sparking outrage against the utility company.

Kate Bueler, a fourth-generation San Francisco resident who lives in the Richmond District, said she hoped the outage would revive calls to break up PG&E.

“I think it’s really shining a light on the fact that PG&E is not appropriate for us any longer. And I hope that there’s calls for public power,” Bueler said. “Power monopoly doesn’t work.”

Three weeks later, some residents are still enduring the noise from generators PG&E installed to shore up power in the neighborhood, which the company installed outside of the PG&E building on the corner of 24th Avenue and Balboa Street.

The generators, which have been providing supplemental power to the area during the repair process, will finally be removed when final repairs to the substation are completed.

“The constant diesel fumes, noise and general disruption without an end date or communication from PGE has been nuts,” one neighborhood resident posted on Reddit.

Caitlin Starke, who moved to the Richmond two weeks ago and has a baby, said she did not receive any communication about the planned outage from PG&E.

She had heard of last month’s blackout but said she didn’t know that was the cause of the disruptive generators.

“There’s someone parked in a truck right on my block, and it’s blinking lights at all hours of the day,” she said. “I think I’m slowly losing my mind.”

PG&E lists instructions to prepare for a planned outage on their website, including charging personal devices, preparing a battery-powered flashlight and stocking bottled water.

Supervisors Alan Wong and Connie Chan posted a map on Instagram displaying planned outage zones. Bueler said the map was hard to navigate. “You can’t even read the streets.”

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is expected to hold a public hearing with PG&E next month, where affected residents and business owners can raise concerns about response and claims with company representatives.

Wong and Chan, who oversee the Sunset and Richmond districts respectively, have both held meetings with business owners to help them file claims. Restaurants were hit especially hard in the December blackout, losing refrigerated inventory and holiday weekend revenue.

“When we return to normal operations, we expect this will help avoid some of the brief outages that customers in the Richmond District/Golden Gate Park area have experienced in the last couple of weeks,” PG&E said in a statement.

“We know these outages have been frustrating for our customers, and we’ve been working tirelessly during this time to inspect equipment and develop plans to provide the reliability that our customers expect and deserve.”