LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Pacific Gas and Electric said it has begun shutting off power across 22 counties in Northern California due to a strong wind event expected to continue through early Wednesday morning, with approximately two dozen Lake County residents to be included in the shutoff.
PG&E said the public safety power shutoff, or PSPS, event will affect customers in portions of 22 counties and seven tribal communities in the northern Sierra foothills, northern Sacramento Valley and elevated North Bay terrain.
This PSPS event is based on forecasts of widespread, severely dry conditions and strong, gusty winds that create critical fire weather with high ignition risk. These conditions are expected to continue through early Wednesday morning.
The power shutoff is expected to impact approximately 172,000 customers in Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, El Dorado, Humboldt, Kern, Lake, Lassen, Mariposa, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sonoma, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne and Yuba counties.
The shutoffs began at different times across the PSPS area, with the earliest shutoffs taking place starting at 9 p.m., PG&E said.
In Lake County, 24 residents in the unincorporated areas of the county, none of them medical baseline customers, can expect to have their power shut off between 3 and 6 a.m. Tuesday. PG&E said the estimated time of restoration for those customers is 7 p.m. Wednesday.
PG&E said it will use temporary generation and islanding to enable about 69,000 customers and several medical facilities to stay energized.
The company said it is working to improve the PSPS program by making events smaller in size, shorter in length and smarter for our customers.
Although the National Weather Service has placed 1.5 million customers across PG&E’s service territory under red flag warning conditions, the company has been able to limit public safety PSPS de-energization to less than 12 percent of those customers now under red flag warning risk.
Customers can use an address lookup tool to find out if their location is being monitored for the potential safety shutoff at www.pge.com/pspsupdates.
PG&E plans public safety power shutoff across 22 counties; two dozen Lake County residents to be impacted
- Lake County News reports
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