Mark's Notebook

Powerless

We lost power at 9:30 this morning. Power was not restored until after 12 noon. The radio said that 4000 customers in our town were without power, and PG&E had no idea what was causing the problem, even at 11:30 am, two full hours after the outage started.

Whoa! I used to work for a company that made computer equipment that allowed electrical utilities to monitor stuff like this. PG&E had no idea what was causing the problem? Maybe they should have bought our product.

At 5:45, we lost power again. This time, the radio said that 500 customers were still without power from the 9:30 am outage. But at least now they knew that the cause of the outage was an automobile running into a power pole. Even without computers, how hard could it be to figure that out? Some poor shmuck sat in his car for two hours before someone noticed he had hit a power pole.

Anyway, now this was a new outage. We certainly should not be included in the 500 customers still hurting from the morning, because this was a new outage. So how many were affected by the afternoon outage, which lasted one hour?

Nowhere on the PG&E web site can one research these outages. You must call an automated 800 number to get any information. PG&E has a real credibility problem when

• They don't even know what caused an outage in a valley residential community (not in the hills), two hours after it happened;
• When you listen to the radio and all the information is old;
• When their web site doesn't give any information.

And, as Mary says, every year you pay more and you get less service. It's no wonder PG&E is in Chapter 11. They are a service company, and their service is inconsistent at best.

Articles

Last updated Tuesday 13 May 2008