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Find out what causes your power to go out
We strive to keep your power on around the clock. Unfortunately, outages due to emergencies can happen at any time and without warning. There are also planned outages when we must turn off power for safely or maintenance.
- Planned outages: When we know about an outage in advance, we will notify affected customers before the outage.
- Unplanned outages: For emergency or unexpected outages, we send notifications as soon as possible.
For the latest information on any outage, view our outage map.
Planned outages
- Maintenance outage – Customers are notified in advance
- Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) – To help prevent a wildfire, customers are notified in advance when possible
- Rotating outage – Due to heat waves and power grid strain, customers are notified in advance when possible
Unplanned outages
- Major outages due to storms, earthquakes or fires - No advanced notifications
- General unplanned outages - No advanced notifications
- Emergency response- No advanced notifications
Types of planned outages
When we know about an outage in advance, we will notify affected customers. For the latest information on any outage, view our outage map.
Maintenance outage
A scheduled outage that occurs when we turn the power off to work on power lines, power poles or to trim trees or vines near power lines. We send a letter in the mail to notify account holders in advance if they will be affected by a maintenance outage.
Learn more about maintenance outages
Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS)
A Public Safety Power Shutoff, also called a PSPS, occurs in response to severe weather. We turn off power to help prevent wildfire and keep communities safe. Although you may not live or work in a high fire-threat area or an area experiencing high winds, your power may be shut off if your home or business relies on a line that runs through an area with severe weather.
Learn more about PSPS
Get current PSPS outage information
Rotating Outage
During a heat wave, the demand for electricity accelerates and can put a strain on the state’s electric grid. To protect the stability of the grid, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), manager of the grid, may decide rotating outages are necessary. They direct PG&E and other California utilities to activate rotating outages (also called “rolling blackouts”). During a rotating outage, “blocks” (small groups of customers) will experience an outage during each rotation in lieu of entire towns or large areas losing power.
Learn more about rotating outages
Types of unplanned outages
For emergency or unexpected outages, we send notifications as soon as possible. For the latest information on any outage, view our outage map.
General unplanned outages
An unexpected, localized outage caused by damage from a car accident or weather. It could also be caused by branches touching a powerline with Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings (EPSS) in a high fire threat area. We work to restore these unplanned outages quickly. You can find out the status of a repair outage on our outages map.
Find current outage information
Learn more about Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings (EPSS)
Major Outage
A widespread and unexpected outage caused by a storm, wildfire, earthquake or major accident. We notify impacted customers as soon as possible and keep them up to date while we work to restore power as soon as it is safely possible. During a major outage, we will also post links to the latest information on our home page.
Visit the outage map
Emergency response outage
An outage requested by police, firefighters or other first responders during a wildfire, earthquake or other emergency to safeguard their response. We notify impacted customers as soon as possible. The outage continues until first responders determine it is safe to turn power back on.
Learn more so you can be prepared
Estimating your restoration time
During large storms or when there is widespread damage, it is more challenging to predict actual restoration times. There could be issues accessing our equipment due to downed trees or severe weather. It could be that there is widespread damage. We need to access each outage and may not be able to provide a restoration time immediately.
We know that restoring power quickly is important
Our crews work overtime, and we bring in resources from other utilities to help restore your power safely and as quickly as possible.
- Restoration is prioritized for critical customers such as hospitals, telecom and water districts.
- Largest outages are restored first to get the highest number of customers restored quickly.
A down utility pole brought down by a recent storm
