PG&E plunges 2.8 million Californians into darkness

Bloomberg

PG&E Corp cut power to more than 2.5 million Californians in the state’s largest deliberate blackout ever.
As of midnight local time, the bankrupt utility giant had shut off the lights to 877,000 homes and businesses in 38 counties across Northern and Central California, including parts of Oakland and Berkeley, but sparing the city of San Francisco, as it tries to keep power lines from igniting wildfires during the strongest wind storm in years. The company has said it expects the shutoff to affect as many as 940,000 customers, almost a fifth of its base.
The largest number of outages were in Sonoma County, where the Kincade fire has put 89,000 residents under mandatory evacuation PG&E said it expects to have most power restored on Monday morning, but that another round of windy weather is forecast to begin Tuesday.
“What we find ourselves experiencing is a historic wind event,” Andy Vesey, head of the Pacific Gas & Electric utility unit, said at a press conference. The shutoff is a “last resort to make sure that in these conditions our operations will not create a major public safety issue. That’s why we do it.”
The start times in some cases were pushed back because anticipated winds which are forecast to gust as high as 65 to 80 miles per hour (129 kilometers per hour) didn’t arrive as early as initially forecast.
It’s the third time this month that PG&E has resorted to mass blackouts to avoid wildfires. The San Francisco-based company has been taking more extreme measures since its equipment sparked blazes in 2017 and 2018, saddling it with an estimated $30 billion in liabilities and forcing it into bankruptcy.
The shutoffs have ignited a debate over how far California is willing to go to prevent fires in an increasingly warm and dry climate. Despite the power cuts, blazes continue to burn.
In Southern California, Edison International is warning that it may cut service to more than 160,000 customers.
Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas & Electric said it has no emergency shutoff plans at present. Weather models show the wind storm could be the most powerful to hit California in years, according to PG&E.
Wildfires are already raging at both ends of California, prompting Governor Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency Friday.
The Tick blaze near Los Angeles forced tens of thousands of evacuations. And north of San Francisco, the Kincade fire is raging in the vineyards of Sonoma County, triggering a evacuation.
It had destroyed at least 77 structures and burned more than 25,000 acres. The Sonoma County fire was reported minutes after a PG&E transmission line in the area malfunctioned. Firefighters have not determined the cause of the blaze. PG&E’s shares plummeted 31% to $5, a record low.
Shares of Edison fell 8.5% as fires burned in its Southern California service territory. Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick implored residents to leave immediately before the storm causes the fire to grow even more rapidly.
“We’d like to get you out while we still have power and we still have communications,” he said.
All told, there’s about $12 billion worth of property within a mile of the active fires, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Evenki Research.
The prospect of more liabilities from wildfires is especially vexing for PG&E.
Since filing for Chapter 11 in January, the judge overseeing the case has warned that another big blaze would upend the utility’s bankruptcy and potentially wipe out shareholders.