Californians could find themselves in the dark again this week, this time due to power shut-offs imposed by the state’s largest utility to reduce the risk of more wildfires.
Pacific Gas and Electric shut off the power for more than 170,000 homes and businesses as of Tuesday morning, the utility said. The shut-offs are occurring for customers in 22 counties, and the utility plans to turn off power in at least one more county Tuesday afternoon. It is estimated that the shut-offs could affect more than 500,000 people.
This isn’t the first time PG&E has turned off the power for its customers. The utility imposed similar “public safety power shutdowns” last October during wildfire season. PG&E has been in hot water for several years over its equipment’s role in sparking wildfires, including the deadly Camp fire in 2018, and the company just emerged from bankruptcy in July.
But the latest shut-offs come as California’s power grid is under immense stress, exacerbated by record-breaking temperatures across the state and hundreds of wildfires already blazing in the heat.
Over Labor Day weekend, several regions in the state experienced their highest-ever observed temperatures. Scientists say climate change is only making those scorching temperatures worse.
Just last month, the state’s grid operator imposed rolling blackouts on people in California during peak demand amid an intense heat wave. Those shut-offs weren’t to mitigate wildfire risk but because the grid operator, California’s Independent System Operator, said there wasn’t enough power feeding into the grid to meet demand.
The operator was able to avoid a repeat of those shut-offs over Labor Day weekend. The grid operator encouraged people in the state to conserve energy sharply. The Energy Department also stepped in at the state’s request, declaring a grid emergency.
California’s electricity troubles, however, have sharpened Republican attacks on the state’s aggressive climate policies, which they blame for the shut-offs.
“While the Secretary has offered this emergency assistance to California in this time of crisis, he also encourages state policymakers to evaluate why the grid is not able to handle extreme stress which could be alleviated with the support of greater baseload power generation and natural gas supply,” said Shaylyn Hynes, an Energy Department spokeswoman, in a statement about the department’s intervention.
President Trump has also linked California’s woes to aggressive climate policies, noting his rival Joe Biden’s climate plans, some of which set even stronger targets than the state.
California energy officials, however, have said the rolling outages last month weren’t caused by increasing amounts of renewable energy on the grid. Energy experts and former federal energy regulators have also suggested that the root problem is poor planning among California’s energy agencies that left the state unprepared.
Nonetheless, California officials voted earlier this month to extend the lives of four natural gas plants slated to shut down this year in an effort to guarantee that the lights stay on in the near-term as the state transitions to more renewable power.
