Tri-Valley Power Restoration: Danville, PG&E, Schools, Roads

DANVILLE, CA — Power was slowing being restored to PG&E customers in the Tri-Valley area Thursday after a shutoff that began late Wednesday. Transmission lines were being repaired to restore power to roughly 126,000 customers in the San Ramon and nearby areas. The remaining lines remained down until the wind event ended, but lines are not being re-energized until they are inspected and repaired.

The Red Flag Warning for the Santa Cruz Mountains expired at noon on Thursday. The East and North Bays had Red Flag Warnings in effect until 5 p.m. Thursday. Even as the warnings expired, the threat for fire danger remains high, according to the National Weather Service.

Go here and click on Outage Map for PG&E information on Danville and San Ramon shutdowns.

The Town of Danville came out of the PG&E power shutdown pretty much unscathed, but Thursday afternoon there was an unrelated outage reported in Town and in Diablo affecting around 550 customers. Not related to the Public Safety Power Shutoff, the outage was likely due to a transformer malfunction.

The Town has been advising residents and businesses to be prepared for future outages, and exercise caution when traveling through areas that may be impacted by power shutdowns, including San Ramon. If traffic signals are non-operational, it’s best to avoid these areas until power is restored, the Town advised.

The San Ramon Valley Unified School District was open Thursday with classes in session; Friday classes will be in session as well. No Danville streets were significantly impacted, and the Ramon Regional Medical Center did not experience any major disruption to patient care.

Many residents in the Bay Area still remain without power. PG&E continued the second phase of its Public Safety Planned Shutoff late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, with locales in and near the Peninsula, Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose, Santa Clara Valley and the Santa Cruz area losing power.

PG&E officials haven't provided an estimate to when power will be fully restored to all areas.

Thursday afternoon the utility did announce that several counties have been given the "all clear" and crews were beginning safety inspections and repair and restoration efforts. Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, Mariposa, Merced, Monterey, San Joaquin, Santa Clara, Stanislaus and Tuolumne counties have been given the "all clear," while El Dorado, Placer, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties are in "partial all clear" status, meaning some parts of the counties are safe to resume electricity services.

Nearly 800,000 PG&E customers in parts of 34 counties in Northern and Central California lost power during the shutoff.

Solar customers are also affected by the shutdown.

"When PG&E restores power, rooftop solar systems should re-engage automatically," PG&E officials said in a statement. "Solar systems cannot be powered off a generator as the two technologies do not work together. Customers who have a home battery system paired with their solar system may generally have up to two hours of backup power, depending on the size of their battery."

PG&E officials said the company doesn't reimburse customers for losses during shutdown events "as power will be shut off for safety when gusty winds and dry conditions, combined with a heightened fire risk, threaten a portion of the electric system."

Despite the fact that reimbursement is unlikely, PG&E officials said customers can file claims that are reviewed on a case-by-case basis at any time at https://www.pge.com/en_US/resi...

—Bay City News contributed to this report.