Years of maintenance challenges and increasing wildfire risks resulted in an untenable situation for many California businesses, educational facilities and residences this fall: planned power outages. While a planned power outage provides some warning, most users have not been fully aware of the potential impact nor have they been prepared for the associated costs.
On Nov. 18, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) issued its 7th planned power outage notice this year. This outage affected more than 300,000 customers (almost 1,000,000 people) in PG&E’s Northern California service area.