Working to help residents through PG&E outages
As most Bay Area residents know, PG&E has been a terrible steward of our electricity grid.
Bad management and a lack of smart investment and maintenance has led to a situation where every high wind forecast can produce preemptive power outages the utility says are necessary to prevent its equipment from starting wildfires.
The answer to this problem is to harden the grid, and I have voted for measures forcing PG&E to clean up its act. Unfortunately, that is going to take time. Meanwhile, we are suffering the consequences, and that is unacceptable.
That’s why I have introduced three bills to help residents of the East Bay and the rest of California cope the best we can with power outages, whether caused by downed lines or by a utility’s decision to shut down the grid.
Senate Bill 431, which I jointly authored with Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, would require telecommunications companies to have at least three days of backup power during outages in fire-prone areas.
SB801 would require electrical companies to help medical baseline customers, whose lives would be endangered by an extended, deliberate power outage, to acquire backup power sources.
SB802 would help hospitals keep their lights on by allowing them to use diesel generators as backup power sources during a planned utility power shut-off, even if the governor has not declared a disaster or state of emergency.
Tens of thousands of Californians lost cell phone access during the blackouts last fall. That’s not just an inconvenience. It’s a threat to public health and safety. When a person can’t receive life-saving alerts from police and fire agencies or find out which escape routes are safe, their life might be in danger. We must have more than just the few hours of battery backup that is the standard today. Seventy-two hours should be the minimum.
More than 100,000 people have signed up for PG&E’s “medical baseline” designation, which means that they depend on electricity for their health. But that designation means only that they will get advance notice of planned power outages.
For someone on oxygen, with medication that needs refrigeration or dependent on an electric wheelchair, an extended power outage can remove access to the critical tools they need to stay alive. While PG&E recently announced a plan to deliver backup battery packs to some of these customers, only about 500 packs will be available – far fewer than needed. We must require the utilities to provide backup power to anyone whose life depends on it.
Hospitals are currently allowed to run their diesel-powered generators without limits during a declared disaster. But most local air pollution districts have limits on how many hours a generator can run during normal conditions, and many hospitals are concerned that those limits apply even during a Public Safety Power Shutoff. My bill would give them the confidence to keep their doors open without having to worry about huge fines from air quality regulators.
PG&E is responsible for maintaining a grid that can stay on in a windstorm without risk of causing fires. Until that safety net is guaranteed, it is the responsibility of legislators to protect the vulnerable in our communities and promote the well-being of all Californians.
Steve Glazer is the California State Senator representing the 7th Senate District. If you have questions about this or other topics, you can reach out to him at sd07.senate.ca.gov.