PG&E says recent Santa Cruz County power outages partially due to pre-winter maintenance
SANTA CRUZ, COUNTY, Calif. (KION-TV)- PG&E says that power was restored to customers near the San Lorenzo Valley area that impacted as many as 23,000 at its highest.
"Today (Nov 8) at 8:28 a.m., an electric outage occurred impacting approximately 4,000 customers in the San Lorenzo Valley area. Those customers were restored at approximately 10:21 a.m.," said PG&E in a statement to KION.
PG&E has not shared the cause of Wednesday's outages but said electricity fully returned by 12:11 p.m.
As for Tuesday's outages, PG&E said that power was fully restored by 4:20 p.m. and that the cause of the outage included a tree branch falling on a line and an underground cable connection failure.
"There are two sources of power that feed into the San Lorenzo Valley area. PG&E currently has one of those sources de-energized so that critical pre-winter maintenance can be performed. Serving the entirety of the area from a single source is complicated but done regularly without any problems.
Until the rainy season begins, PG&E continues to prioritize public safety and wildfire prevention through our Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings, which means anytime a branch falls into a power line, the system will de-energize. Yesterday’s outage included a tree branch falling on a line, as well as an underground cable connection failure. Today’s outages are still under investigation.
We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding as we prepare our electric circuits for the potential El Nino season ahead. We expect to have the maintenance work completed and both sources of power to the area restored no later than Saturday, November 11th."
PG&E Spokesperson Tamar Sarkissian
ORIGINAL STORY
PG&E says nearly 9,000 people are without power Tuesday morning in unincorporated Santa Cruz County and Scotts Valley.
Currently, 7,744 customers in the Boulder Creek area are without power and 1,143 Scotts Valley customers are also affected.
There is no current listed cause for the outages. PG&E says power is estimated to return at 1 p.m.
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