PG&E hosts open house, shares plan for power outage solutions
Yountville residents arrived early for PG&E’s outage related open house at the Community Center on Wednesday night with questions regarding the cause of the many recent power outages in the southern part of town. Some 40 people in attendance did not get the answers that they were searching for, however, even though maps and informative charts explaining how the power outages happen were on display.
Dave Canny, PG&E vice president of the North Coast Region, admitted that the company is not providing enough follow-up as to what caused each outage, which repairs were made and what will be done to mitigate future issues. He said that they are working on the ability to provide that information in the near future.
According to PG&E representatives, about ten in addition to Canny were at this event, the outages are happening because the utility company has devices on their power lines that will shut off power if the lines are disturbed.
Power can be disrupted by a variety of events including animals, falling tree branches, equipment issues, maintenance work, and third-party events such as contractors. They provided a pie chart to show the year-to-date causes of local outages, with the highest number of incidents being maintenance work, unidentified causes and equipment issues.
The sensitivity of the shut-off devices is adjusted based on the time of year, with fire season set to the highest degree of sensitivity, while they are dialed back in the rainy season. When a device is triggered, it shuts off power until the line can be inspected for damage before power can be restored. The majority of Yountville, including the south part of town, is on one line that seems to be taking the brunt of the shutoffs. Although PG&E could not pinpoint the specific causes of the recent outages at this meeting.
While Yountville itself is not in a high fire danger area, the same lines that feed the power to town also run into the high fire danger areas, thereby causing PG&E to increase the sensitivity of all the shutoff devices during fire season.
PG&E’s plan for early 2026 is to install equipment that will be able to separate the lines that run into the high fire danger areas from the ones that run into the town. They also plan to have the ability to remotely transfer customers to another branch of service in the event of an outage, to improve service.
