Power outages have affected parts of the Central Valley, even up to San Francisco where at least 45,000 people without electricity following two separate outages, one caused by a squirrel and another by heat.
Outages may continue with the warmer temperatures – around 105 degrees on Monday in the Central Valley.
“Heat can have an affect on our electric system anytime of the year but particularly in the beginning of the season it can stress out equipment already close to failing or close to expiring – Brandi Ehlers, Spokesperson PG&E.
Parts of Northwest Fresno were in the dark on Monday.
KMJ News spoke to Jennifer, who lives north of Herndon, and said her stove wasn’t working so she went out to dinner: “I got a text from my next door neighbor across the street saying that the power was back on about 5 minutes later but we still continued down Herndon and went out to eat.
A good resolution to that situation, as outages can happen according to PG&E’s spokesperson Brandi Ehlers: “Its not something necessarily that I would say to ‘expect.” We’ve done a lot of work to improve the reliability of our electrical system, and we are aware when the heat days come we do make sure to have extra crews and extra people available.”
One tip from PG&E to save money here in the very warm Central Valley.
“We recommend if you need to leave your A/C on when you leave your house to set it at least 85 degrees, but if you do turn it off, it’s going to use the same amount of power later to cool your home off.”
Call PG&E’s hotline to report and outage: 800-743-5002.
