PG&E outage affects thousands in San Francisco after substation work
A routine operation at two substations caused a power outage that left about 9,400 PG&E customers without electricity, while a system error temporarily reported a much larger number of affected customers.
Around 9:45 a.m. Saturday, a protective device activated during routine work at two San Francisco substations, cutting power to roughly 9,400 Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) customers in the Richmond and Golden Gate Park neighborhoods. The utility’s outage notification system mistakenly indicated that about 120,000 customers were without power, a figure later corrected after about 30 minutes.
"120,000 customers were never out of power," PG&E spokesperson Edgar Hopida said in a statement. The error occurred because two electrical circuits were involved, causing the system to aggregate the outage data to a larger protective device. By noon, about 2,500 customers remained without electricity as crews repaired the lines and shifted service to alternate circuits. PG&E pushed back its estimated restoration time from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. and confirmed that all service was fully restored by 4:02 p.m. The outage also impacted traffic signals, prompting Alphabet’s Waymo to temporarily suspend its robotaxi service in the city. An outage map showed the highest concentration of affected customers in the Richmond District, with smaller pockets of outages elsewhere in San Francisco.