As California braced for critical fire conditions starting Thursday afternoon, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. officials said a quick-moving storm that produced rain in some locations helped planners reduce the number of counties and customers facing public safety power shutoffs through the weekend to roughly 20,000 customers.
PG&E said late Wednesday that the possible engineered outages could begin as early as 1 p.m. in rural areas of the Sacramento Valley and Bay Area before strong winds could expand the shutoffs to 24 counties by Saturday.
The utility said “substantial wetting rainfall” in the Sierra Nevada gave “a welcome boost to dead fuel moisture values and relative humidity in these areas.”
“As a result of these favorable conditions, PG&E removed nine counties and more than 10,000 customers from the scope of this PSPS event,” the company said.
The counties removed were: Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, San Luis Obispo, Sierra and Tuolumne.
A so-called PSPS event is triggered by PG&E when forecasts suggest fire weather conditions from a combination of strong winds, dry vegetation and hot temperatures.
Warmer winds from the Great Basin — often called Diablo winds — are now the primary concern for meteorologists as most of Northern California falls under a National Weather Service red flag warning beginning at 11 p.m. Thursday and lasting through 5 p.m. Saturday.
North-to-east winds across the Sacramento Valley from the Delta to Redding are expected to kick up to 15 to 30 mph with gusts as high as 55 mph along the Valley’s western tier in places outside of Winters, Willows and Red Bluff. Coupled with dry conditions — humidity levels at or below 25% and poor overnight moisture — the winds can lead a spark to rapidly spread.
PG&E has come under consistent criticism for engineering shutoffs in past years to ward off the potential for its equipment to spark blazes under extreme conditions.
“Our overarching goal is to stop catastrophic wildfires by proactively turning off power in targeted areas when extreme weather threatens our electric grid,” the company said. “We recognize that PSPS outages create hardships for our customers and communities. Our sole focus is to keep our customers safe.”
Which counties could see PSPS outages?
While foothill counties east of the capital region were taken off the potential outage list, the “remaining counties in scope remain in watch status,” the utility’s forecasters said.
Counties that could be affected by a PSPS outage Thursday are:
- Alameda: 422 customers (24 Medical Baseline customers)
- Colusa County: 606 (30)
- Contra Costa County: 973 (59)
- Glenn County: 508 (21)
- Lake County: 1,088 (83)
- Mendocino County: 13 (4)
- Napa County: 3,103 customers (135)
- Santa Clara County: 663 (41)
- Shasta County: 2,407(194)
- Solano County: 1,838 (159)
- Sonoma County: 1,010 (23)
- Tehama County: 2,056 (199)
- Yolo County: 262 (15)
Most counties in this list remained unchanged from PG&E’s original plans, though Napa jumped five-fold from the company’s estimate Tuesday that roughly 650 customers could be cut off. Lake County also jumped from just 168 customers in the previous estimate and the number of Shasta ratepayers doubled.
On Friday, when winds are predicted to be their strongest, PG&E could call for outages in those counties and expand to 11 more:
- Butte County: 1,153 homes and businesses (87 Medical Baseline customers)
- Fresno County: 1,235 (75)
- Lake County: 1,088 (83)
- Madera County: 1,310 (109)
- Mariposa County: 640 (15)
- Merced County: 27 (0)
- Monterey County: 597 (21)
- Plumas County: 316 (11)
- San Benito County: 24 (0)
- Santa Barbara County: 155 (4)
- Santa Cruz County: 132 (8)
- Stanislaus County: 27 (0)
The utility said the outages, if instituted, would make up a small number of customers in each county, typically in rural or remote areas or those adjacent to its transmission network. In total, as many as 20,565 homes and businesses — less than 1% of the company’s estimated 5.5 million electricity accounts — could be put into darkness for several hours until conditions improve and PG&E crews were able to inspect its network.
“As each weather situation is unique, we carefully review a combination of factors when deciding if power must be turned off,” it said.
If carried out, the PSPS would be the fourth series this year for the Oakland-based electricity provider, which has been blamed for sparking several wildfires across the region including the deadliest blaze in state history.
The latest outages could come two weeks after the last round of potential outages in which fewer than 10,000 ratepayers in the northern Sacramento Valley were placed in the dark to protect infrastructure.
Utility blamed for past wildfire events
PG&E in recent years has imposed planned power shutoffs in the face of dire wildfire weather. The utility company’s equipment has been blamed for sparking some of the worst fires in state history, including the 2018 Camp Fire that devastated Paradise, and PG&E Corp. has been found liable for billions of dollars worth of destruction.
The utility since 2017 has been blamed for starting more than 30 wildfires, blazes that destroyed more than 23,000 homes and businesses and has killed more than 100 people. Since then, PG&E has been working to underground many electricity lines in fire-prone areas , which it says is the most effective way to reduce fire risk and is making California’s grid more resilient to climate change by leading to a notable reduction in wildfire ignitions this season.
More than 1 million acres have burned in California this year across nearly 6,900 different wildfire incidents, according to Cal Fire, though none in 2024 have been blamed on the utility.
More information on the potential PSPS and how to get alerts is available on PG&E’s website.
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