SAN FRANCISCO (AP/KRON) – California’s utility regulator is issuing a series of sanctions against Pacific Gas and Electric for what it calls “failures in execution” during the largest planned power shut-off in state history to avoid wildfires.
California Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer says the utility must have a goal of restoring power within 12 hours instead of its current 48 hours, minimize the scale of outages and improve communication.
PG&E last week took the unprecedented step of cutting power to more than 700,000 customers, affecting nearly 2 million Californians.
The company did it because of a dangerous wind forecast but acknowledged that its execution was poor.
Its website frequently crashed, and many people said they did not know the power was going out.
On Friday, PG&E’s CEO pledged that many of these things would definitely improve during the next PSPS.
“Better notification, clearer notification, narrowing of the scope, website that works no matter how much traffic is on it, um short wait times as we augment staff at the call centers. These are the kinds of things, better coordination with the state agencies, these are the kind of things we can really improve on quickly,” he said.
PG&E didn’t immediately comment on the sanctions.