It was a busy day in the otherwise quiet Alameda County community of Sunol. The town is home to just shy of 1,000 residents. But last month, about 50 PG&E workers gathered on Kilkare Road for a massive one-day electric project.

The work they completed bundles together more than 40 separate jobs, including pole replacements and maintenance. This essential work ensures the safety and reliability of the power supply, supporting hundreds of customers.

By bundling, PG&E provided the greatest benefit to the Sunol community with the least impact. While it involved a planned power interruption for residential and business customers, the outage was limited to just one day.

"This is an example of how we're looking at every opportunity to reduce impacts on customers. Grouping several jobs together in one day saves cost and we aren't having to come back multiple times to conduct individual jobs in the same neighborhood," said Jake Zigelman, PG&E vice president for the Bay Area Region. “This work will also improve grid resiliency and safety in a high fire risk area that can be more prone to wildfire safety outages during certain risky weather conditions.”

The Sunol bundling project prevented an additional six to seven planned outages and road closures over the course of several months, making it a more efficient and cost-effective approach.

“We are on a journey to improve affordability for our customers here at PG&E. Last year we were able to save $850 million as a company. This year we’re shooting for even more than that. Bundling is a part of that,” said Zigelman.

Bundling is not part of every job. It requires lengthy and complicated planning and logistics. The Sunol job included about 15 trucks and eight crews to complete the dozens of jobs. But when it can come together, it is an example of PG&E work at its best.

PG&E electric superintendent Ryan Willis noted it took the collaboration of multiple departments to make the bundle a success. He also acknowledged the lineworkers. Each crew took on about five jobs to successfully complete the Sunol bundle.

It was a rewarding moment for Willis, who said the hard work was worth it, knowing it will benefit customers.

“This is what we’ve been after for quite a few years now and to see it come to fruition now is a big step,” said Willis. “We’d like to do this more.”