The Danville City Council called a PG&E executive on the carpet Tuesday evening demanding to know what’s leaving the community in the dark so often and what exactly they’re going to do about it.
Customers say there have been 40 power outages in less than four months, and restaurants, schools and residents are losing money, and patience.
“The PSPS and all these technical things, people are just, ‘I really don’t care, I just want my electricity!’” said councilmember Renee Morgan.
PG&E Bay Area Vice President Aaron Johnson says work on two local substations wrapped up last week and that was part of the problem.
Power line safety settings, designed to prevent fires, are also preventing electrical transmission.
“Unfortunately for the community of Danville, there were a number of instances of those fast trips of those circuits, and it's really impacted the community this summer,” said Johnson.
There was also public comment from school district reps.
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“Our team estimates that there has been a loss of $5,000-worth of food over the weekend because of the power outages,” said Shelley Clark of the San Ramon Valley Unified School District.
Customers left in the dark, in more ways than one, also spoke out.
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“After seven days off and on and trying to work out of the house and my food’s melting, and the power’s off, then coming back on,” said Eileen Bader or Danville. “It’s frustrating I’d rather have them say, ‘we got a major problem, you're gonna be out for seven days.’”
PG&E is promising solutions but the mayor of Danville wants to see them, and soon.
“To be honest with you, you are really starting to piss people off! I just wanna make sure that if we can solve this problem, that would be amazing,” said Mayor Robert Storer.
