Pacific Gas & Electric planned shutdown today

[Searc]

And now there is another starting tomorrow at 4:30 am. We will be lucky to get power for a few hours if at all before they shut if back off for another two day. I’m over it already.

Having your power shut off is an inconvenience, I get that. Having your house burn to the ground is a hell of a lot worse.

 

[disneychrista]

Having your power shut off is an inconvenience, I get that. Having your house burn to the ground is a hell of a lot worse.

That’s what I’ve been saying too. I completely understand the reasons for it. I would much rather lose $200 worth of food then my entire house.
Looking at the positive. I’ll have 4 + days off work, hopefully WITH pay. And my house will be cleaned and organized. Nothing like free time on your hands with no TV to distract you.

 

[wgeo]

I feel bad for everyone. But I really feel bad for the people that off work without pay and are losing their food. They are paying a high price for someone else's carelessness.

 

[disneychrista]

I survived 88 hours with no power. We lost power about 7pm on Saturday Night and got it back about 1pm this afternoon. I am really hoping that we don't have to go through this again.

I did a lot of reading. A lot of cleaning. A lot of organizing. We lost everything in the fridge and freezer. And I am honestly afraid to buy too much for fear of losing it too. I think I will be doing shopping for a couple days at a time until December when the rains start and the fear of wild fires end. Typically fire season ends tomorrow but I am not taking any chances.

 

[RamblingMad]

I found out about ask trim from outside magazine. It will automatically ask Comcast for refunds when the Internet goes down. I wonder if you guys get any compensation for when your power goes off.

 

[kdonnel]

I found out about ask trim from outside magazine. It will automatically ask Comcast for refunds when the Internet goes down. I wonder if you guys get any compensation for when your power goes off.

I understand getting a partial refund for a service you paid for but was not delivered like Comcast going down while your power was up but in this case they are not paying for the power that is not being delivered unless there is a base month charge in which case I guess the base monthly charge could be adjusted by a few cents for each day?

 

[disneychrista]

I found out about ask trim from outside magazine. It will automatically ask Comcast for refunds when the Internet goes down. I wonder if you guys get any compensation for when your power goes off.

Nope. The up side is we won’t have charges for 3.5 days since there was no usage. The downside is we lost more food than we are saving in electric costs.

 

[RamblingMad]

I understand getting a partial refund for a service you paid for but was not delivered like Comcast going down while your power was up but in this case they are not paying for the power that is not being delivered unless there is a base month charge in which case I guess the base monthly charge could be adjusted by a few cents for each day?

You should get some compensation for disruption to at least offset some of your lost food costs.

 

[bcla]

Nope. The up side is we won’t have charges for 3.5 days since there was no usage. The downside is we lost more food than we are saving in electric costs.

They're giving a $100 credit for customers affected by the earlier shutoffs, but there's no word on the latest rounds. They're claiming that it's as an apology for the "website and communication" issues.

https://www.pgecurrents.com/2019/10...ic-safety-power-shutoff-customer-bill-credit/

 

[disneychrista]

They're giving a $100 credit for customers affected by the earlier shutoffs, but there's no word on the latest rounds. They're claiming that it's as an apology for the "website and communication" issues.

https://www.pgecurrents.com/2019/10...ic-safety-power-shutoff-customer-bill-credit/

To all customers or just those who had their power go out during the 10/9? I wasn't affected by the 10/9 but was during the 10/26 & 10/29 which really for me was just one big outage.

 

[RamblingMad]

I’d call every time I had a power outage to see if I could get anything.

 

[bcla]

To all customers or just those who had their power go out during the 10/9? I wasn't affected by the 10/9 but was during the 10/26 & 10/29 which really for me was just one big outage.

Only for the 10/9 outage. I remember getting ready for that where I couldn't access their website and the communications of what to expect were horrible. But I waited and the power stayed on.

I got one outage on 10/26 and my wife says that power didn't come back on until 10/28 in the afternoon. The 10/29 shutdown wasn't scheduled for my area, and in any case PG&E cancelled the planned shutdown for the East Bay.

At a couple of those tents, I got at least $100 (if "full retail" is considered) worth of stuff including some things I really needed. I was kind of surprised I was able to score a couple of pricey USB power packs. I didn't buy any ice though. In one tent someone asked where to get ice. She said she tried a bunch of places including various supermarkets and convenience stores - and they were all out. I think one of the things that kept my freezer reasonably cold was barely opening it as well as lots of ice substitute packs in there. After two days they were still partially solid. At the very least it was kept at freezing temperature even though some of the contents were partially thawed.

 

[gillep]

The whole situation is a huge mess. I know someone who flew out of SFO early this morning. That person said that it was freaky seeing literally the entire SF Bay Area (except for SF itself) totally dark and without power. California is a mess right now. The richest state in the entire country and it basically has a power system akin to that of a 3rd world country.

I am the first to complain about all things PG&E but the person you spoke with was not being truthful at all. I live in the bay area and of all the people my husband and I know and work with only a few have lost power, it is certainly not 'literally the entire SF Bay Area (except SF itself)' and we don't live in SF itself, so that's certainly not the reason we don't know many people without power.

This whole debacle has been ridiculous, with horrible communication from PG&E, but it is a very far cry from the entire SF Bay Area being without power, that's an extreme hyperbole that does no one any good to spread around.

 

[bcla]

I am the first to complain about all things PG&E but the person you spoke with was not being truthful at all. I live in the bay area and of all the people my husband and I know and work with only a few have lost power, it is certainly not 'literally the entire SF Bay Area (except SF itself)' and we don't live in SF itself, so that's certainly not the reason we don't know many people without power.

This whole debacle has been ridiculous, with horrible communication from PG&E, but it is a very far cry from the entire SF Bay Area being without power, that's an extreme hyperbole that does no one any good to spread around.

Certainly hyperbole to say that outside of San Francisco there was no power. However, nearly all of Marin County was shut off. I live in the East Bay, and it didn't take very long to find a block where the power was on. The areas that got shut off were specifically targeted and overwhelmingly were hilly areas with lots of trees/brush.

 

[gillep]

Certainly hyperbole to say that outside of San Francisco there was no power. However, nearly all of Marin County was shut off. I live in the East Bay, and it didn't take very long to find a block where the power was on. The area that got shut off were specifically targeted and overwhelmingly were hilly areas with lots of trees/brush.

Absolutely, there are certainly large areas with no power, and it is ridiculous, but it is still nowhere near 'literally the entire SF Bay Area (except SF itself)'. I am not a native to the Bay Area, but my understanding is that the SF Bay Area encompasses nine counties and is a pretty good size area, so even though Marin County was almost completely without power, another county like Santa Clara has had very few outages. I don't disagree with the sentiment that the power outages are a disgrace to the area, and could have been handled much better (especially that first one), but the extreme hyperbole is not useful.

I hope everyone without power is OK, stay safe and warm, it has been chilly these past couple mornings!!

 

[disneychrista]

it is a very far cry from the entire SF Bay Area being without power, that's an extreme hyperbole that does no one any good to spread around.

The news sure made it seem like it was going to be the entire bay area. Since I was without power for 4 days I don't know what it ended up being. I just know that virtually my entire county and that of the neighboring one was out. But I am technically north of the bay area.

 

[gillep]

The news sure made it seem like it was going to be the entire bay area. Since I was without power for 4 days I don't know what it ended up being. I just know that virtually my entire county and that of the neighboring one was out. But I am technically north of the bay area.

Yes, especially that first event, I honestly thought that the entire area would be without power for an unknown period of time, it was so mismanaged. I even received alerts from PG&E to that effect. Once I was able to get the map working (that was a chore in and of itself) it was clear that the majority of my county (Santa Clara) would be spared, including my home. Lots of people are without power (or have been) especially North of SF it seems, but it is a far cry from the entire SF Bay Area.

Stay safe and sorry about the food loss, I know how that goes as our electrical panel had a failure while we were on vacation in April and we lost everything in our refrigerator and freezer and had the added fun of cleaning all of the melted groseness up off our floor!

 

[bcla]

The news sure made it seem like it was going to be the entire bay area. Since I was without power for 4 days I don't know what it ended up being. I just know that virtually my entire county and that of the neighboring one was out. But I am technically north of the bay area.

I was reading reports for this week's outages that it was expected to be about 600,000 "customers" (residences and businesses) expecting to affect maybe 1.5 million people living in residences. The 9 counties in the Bay Area now have over 7 million people, so it's certainly not even close that most of the Bay Area was affected. But of course news coverage is slanted towards hyperbole if it keeps people watching.

Now it was kind of odd driving through traffic where traffic lights were either on or off. Some cities started putting out temporary STOP signs on sandwich boards although I could hit one set of working lights and then find another not working. I admittedly blew through one by mistake as I kind of missed that I was at a light that was out. I stopped in the middle of the intersection and nobody looked at me funny since it was probably pretty common. I have seen some drivers blatantly blow through lights. It gets pretty crazy sometimes when there's four directions, multiple lanes, left turn lanes, etc where "your turn" becomes an adventure.

 

[disneychrista]

I was reading reports for this week's outages that it was expected to be about 600,000 "customers" (residences and businesses) expecting to affect maybe 1.5 million people living in residences.

The city provides power to the residence who live in the city limits but is considered ONE customer even though it provides service to 16,000 people (give or take).

 

[Heather07438]

I was wondering about power generators. When they cut power for fire risk, does that also mean personal generators are banned?