SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Under investigation for the second-largest wildfire in California history, PG&E Corp. has dialed up the circuit breakers on vast stretches of its grid, enabling automatic shutoffs the instant something goes awry.
The result: More than 400 blackouts since late July, many lasting several hours, triggering a new wave of anger among customers and elected officials as California's largest utility labors to reduce the risk of big wildfires. An estimated 460,000 homes and businesses have been affected, including those that have been hit more than once, said PG&E spokeswoman Mayra Tostado.
This new generation of blackouts is separate from PG&E's public safety power shutoffs, or PSPS, in which customers are usually given about two days' notice as fierce winds are forecast and fire danger increases. The most recent PSPS blacked out 24,000 homes and businesses starting Monday, while another one was scheduled to begin Thursday affecting 29,000 customers.
Instead, PG&E's new "Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings" — usually triggered by contact with a tree or an animal — generate unplanned, unannounced power outages.
"It's a big headache — I'm working from home, all of a sudden there's no power, no warning," said Grass Valley resident Donna Levreault, who's been through three such outages. "It just makes life very hard."
Craig Chatterton, who's lost power twice at his home near Watsonville in the Santa Cruz Mountains, said "they've gone too far, overreacted in some ways."
PG&E says it is fine-tuning the system to reduce the size and duration of the blackouts. Nonetheless, experts say the power outages say the blackouts are the latest reminder of California's struggles to tame its wildfire crisis, which consumed a record 4 million acres last year and nearly 2.5 million acres so far this season as climate change and drought have turned much of the state into a tinder box.
No company is more sensitive to that issue than PG&E, which was driven into bankruptcy in 2019 by a series of major wildfires that saddled the utility with billions in liabilities.
"They're thinking the risks of any ignition are so high right now that we have to take any steps we can," said Michael Wara, a Stanford University legal expert who has advised the Legislature on climate, wildfires and energy issues. "The net effect of that is more blackouts all the time, not just during PSPS events.
"A squirrel can shut down power to your home before a lineman can come out."
PG&E instituted the enhanced safety settings two weeks after the start of the Dixie Fire, which has burned more than 960,000 acres and wiped out the historic downtown of tiny Greenville in Plumas County. Cal Fire is investigating whether the fire began when a healthy-looking tree fell against a conductor on a PG&E power pole near Cresta Dam, west of Quincy.
In court filings, PG&E has said it took hours for an inspector to reach the power line, which had remained energized while the fire burned. While not officially taking the blame for the fire, PG&E told a federal judge last month that the new safety settings "would have prevented that fire."
Patti Poppe, the company's chief executive officer, said the decision is driven in part by the effects of climate change, which have dramatically dried out the forests where much of PG&E's equipment is located. That means PG&E has had to resort to extraordinary methods.
"As the conditions change, we have to change," Poppe said in an interview with The Sacramento Bee. "That is the genesis of our enhanced power line safety settings."
Poppe said she understands how the blackouts have inconvenienced customers but she said they're effective, as measured by what PG&E calls its "ignition rate." That's the percentage of fires started by incidents like a tree branch striking a wire.
"Our ignition rate is down 90% since we implemented those settings," she said.
Tostado cited one example: After a tree fell on a power line Sept. 7 near Coarsegold, in a remote area between Fresno and Yosemite, the electricity was quickly shut off.
"This could have caused a major wildfire," she said. "The program is working. We're keeping customers and communities safer."
The program revolves around circuit breakers and other shutoff devices known as reclosers. After the Dixie Fire, crews increased the sensitivities along 11,500 miles of PG&E's grid, covering nearly half of the company's service area designated by the Public Utilities Commission as particularly vulnerable to wildfire. The main difference is speed: Normally, it could take a whole second for the power to shut off. At the heightened settings, shutoff comes in a tenth of a second if trouble is detected.
"It could be a tree, a tree branch, a squirrel, the birds, a metallic balloon," Tostado said. The heightened settings will remain in effect through the end of wildfire season.
Some blackouts have lasted hours
Each of the blackouts has affected an average of about 1,000 customers, representing a much smaller footprint than the pre-planned public safety shutoffs. Still, they can be lengthy: One blackout in the Apple Hill area lasted 19 hours, according to PG&E.
Tostado said the company began adjusting the settings on about 70% of the devices about a month ago "to make it less sensitive without compromising safety." Also, the system has been adjusted so the blackouts take in a smaller territory.
That means inspectors can patrol the lines and poles more quickly, enabling PG&E to turn the power back on earlier. Before, the average shutdown in Apple Hill lasted 11 hours; now it's down to four. In Placerville, the blackouts last about five hours, or about half as long as before. PG&E has taken other steps to reduce the frequency of the blackouts, including installing cone-shaped "squirrel guards" on some of its poles so the animals are less likely to trigger a shutoff.
Even so, the blackouts have led to numerous complaints to PG&E and the Public Utilities Commission.
Kelly Bates, who lives in Occidental, a few miles from the coast in Sonoma County, told the PUC recently that she's endured four outages, including one on a rainy day last month.
"It rained all day here, I mean real rain," she said in an interview. "On a day like that, is there not a human being who can analyze the situation and realize there's almost no chance of a fire, and override this? I guess there's not."
Last month the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors called on the utilities commission to investigate the PG&E blackouts. "Basically, PG&E is telling their customers that they can choose safety or reliable power but not both," the supervisors' resolution said.
Terrie Prosper, the utilities commission's spokeswoman, said in an email that the PUC "is currently assessing PG&E's use of enhanced powerline safety settings," including dates and locations of the blackouts.
In the meantime, the complaints keep coming.
"My trust in PG&E is pretty low at this point," said Levreault, the Grass Valley resident. "It's just one thing after another with them. ... Every time something happens and they're liable for it, they make life difficult for everybody else."
