Is Yountville plagued with PG&E outages?
Outages from service providers such as PG&E are frustrating, inconvenient and can also become expensive for businesses and professionals that lose hours and productivity when the power unexpectedly shuts off.
Yountville resident Rob Wiley is appealing to other residents in town to hold PG&E accountable for unplanned power outages.
Wiley noted that from Aug. 7, 2024 to Aug. 3 this year, he had a history of eight outages in his phone text history from PG&E. “That’s almost one outage a month in the last year and note that these outages seem to happen when the weather is calm. None during the stormy winter months.”
According to PG&E spokesperson Megan McFarland, there are two tools of note.
“To help keep our communities in and around high fire-risk areas safe, we have enhanced safety settings on our powerlines. They are known as Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings, or EPSS, and many of these lines were activated in late spring across Napa County. EPSS are advanced safety settings and allow our powerlines to automatically turn off power within one-tenth of a second.”
McFarland went on to explain that this can happen when there’s a hazard, such as a tree branch falling into a powerline, which can cause a fire. “These settings are in high fire-risk and surrounding areas, such as parts of Napa County. In 2024, there was a 65 percent reduction in ignitions on EPSS-enabled powerlines.
“When an EPSS setting is triggered, PG&E crews must patrol the entire circuit to ensure no damage or hazards are present. PG&E will use helicopters, when possible, to conduct aerial patrols,” McFarland said. “Extra crews will be brought in when ground patrols are needed so the patrol can be done safely and as quickly as possible to restore service to our customers.”
The other tool that PG&E uses for wildfire prevention is Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS). “Very different than EPSS but same goal,” McFarland said. “Severe weather, such as high winds, can cause trees or debris to damage equipment. If there is dry vegetation, this could lead to a wildfire. When the winds are high, humidity is low, there are a lot of dry fuels on the ground, PG&E may make the call to temporarily shut off power to ensure community safety – this temporary outage is called a Public Safety Power Shutoff.”
McFarland said none of the outages in Yountville this year were due to a PSPS.
McFarland did provide data in regard to four unplanned power outages in Yountville in 2025:
- May 5 impacting 923 customers for 265 minutes, unknown cause
- June 15 impacting 910 customers for 298 minutes. The cause of the outage was an issue with PG&E’s equipment
- June 18 impacting 343 customers for 262 minutes. The cause was an issue with PG&E’s equipment.
- Aug. 2 impacting 714 customers for 164 minutes, unknown cause.
“I have never lived anywhere that had the number of power outages we have experienced since we moved to Yountville five years ago, and that includes when we lived on the Sonoma Coast and were battered by ferocious winter storms,” Wiley said.
“To have eight outages in 12 months is excessive by any measure, and none of them were storm related. They were all related, as far as I know, to deferred maintenance on their infrastructure, most recently an underground vault. We pay almost the highest electric rates in the nation, yet still need backup generators and batteries to power the necessities of life consistently.”
Wiley added, “I would urge neighbors who are unhappy with these outages to take five minutes to fill out a complaint online with the California Public Utilities Commission. It is time for PG&E to be held accountable for their terrible service. They need to do better by the citizens of Yountville.”
To support Wiley in his effort to hold PG&E accountable, the California Public Utilities Commission accepts citizen complaints here: https://cims.cpuc.ca.gov/complaints/Home/FileComplaint
