PG&E customers in Walnut Creek are fed up with the constant power outages and at a city council meeting Tuesday, company officials are explaining why it’s taking place.
PG&E said the outages are likely the result of a program that’s meant to reduce wildfire risk. It’s an unfortunate tradeoff for residents tired of being left in the dark.
“I had to go to Whole Foods to work, Starbucks was pretty packed, but for the most part, because I'm working remote, just finding a place to work,” said Patrick Trainor, who lives in the Northgate Community of Walnut Creek.
He said that during the summer, he experienced three power outages. And the unexpected events made daily errands a bit more difficult.
“I went and did laundry at a place in Concord, like a walk-in place,” said Trainor.
The Grove hair salon lost thousands of dollars during one of those outages.
“It impacted us because we had to call our clients last minute and we were like ‘ok what do we do?’” said hair stylist Sylvia Huerta.
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“We’re depending on you with our lives and right now you’re letting us down,” said Kevin Wilk of the Walnut Creek City Council.
At the meeting, PG&E officials explained why the outages are taking place.
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The company’s powerline safety settings in areas with high wildfire risk can shut off immediately if an object hits the line to prevent the ignition of a fire.
But the power outage can unfortunately extend to areas where wildfire risk is low.
“A community may be served by a line that passes through a high fire level threat area, but their community is not actually in the high fire threat area,” said Aaron Johnson, vice president of PG&E’s Bay Area region.
The utility is taking measures to make the powerlines less sensitive to objects that cause the power lines to shut off.
But one of the biggest changes is the completion of a project -- placing power lines underground near the Northgate Community, which could possibly reduce the number of outages.
“We can expect that to reduce that by a half to a quarter,” said Johnson. .
For locals experiencing outages, they’ll have to wait and see if these changes will make a difference.
“Yeah it's frustrating when you don’t, when it's a day or so, or even a couple of days, one time it was three days long,” said Trainor.
