PG&E reports causes of Tuesday outages, says most-recent outages still under investigation - KSBW Monterey
PG&E reports causes of Tuesday outages, says most-recent outages still under investigation
After two days of power outages affecting thousands of PG&E customers in the Santa Cruz Mountains, PG&E has begun reporting the cause of the disruptions.
On Tuesday, an estimated 9,600 PG&E customers were left in the dark in the San Lorenzo Valley area. It took more than six hours before all of the customers had their power restored.
On Wednesday, PG&E reported that those outages were caused by a tree branch falling on a line and an underground cable connection failure. PG&E noted that the outages were related.
PG&E has touted its Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings in the past. EPSS allows the utility company to turn off power to an area very quickly if there is any kind of hazard on a power line. A single branch will de-energize the entire system. PG&E confirmed that the EPSS was in effect on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, around 8:30 a.m., 4,000 customers again lost power in the San Lorenzo Valley area. Their power was restored two hours later. But, an hour after that, another outage knocked out power for 23,000 customers, all in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
According to PG&E, the fluctuating and widespread outages on Wednesday are still under investigation.
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In response to questions, a spokesperson for PG&E explained that currently, the San Lorenzo Valley area is being served by one source of power.
"There are two sources of power that feed into the San Lorenzo Valley area. PG&E currently has one of those sources de-energized so that critical pre-winter maintenance can be performed," the spokesperson said.
They noted that this is often done without issues, but when the EPSS is activated, it has a bigger impact.
"We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding as we prepare our electric circuits for the potential El Nino season ahead. We expect to have the maintenance work completed and both sources of power to the area restored no later than Saturday, Nov. 11," the company spokesperson said.
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