The Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) is launching one of its ten projects slated for the South Bay, aimed to prevent repeated power outages to 10,000 customers.
The company is undergrounding nearly a mile of power lines so entire neighborhoods don't have to go dark in regions where the wildfire risk increases.
In high wildfire risk areas like the hillsides in San Jose's Almaden Valley, PG&E's powerlines have safety triggers. When a branch or a tree hits these powerlines, it will cut off power immediately.
The function started four years ago, but neighbors said it cuts power to their homes way too often.
“Last year, PG&E was down quite a few days and this year it’s been better so far, so this is good progress," Dan Kennedy of San Jose said.
David Gold, another San Jose resident, said that he switched to solar power because he was sick of the power outages.
“Every summer there’s blackouts, every summer. So whether it’s one or two or sometimes three days, it’s out for three days," Gold said. "So all of my fridge, my food got ruined and everything.”
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Both residents were happy to see PG&E crews starting to work just west of Leland High School to improve its reliability for thousands of customers.
A long stretch of power lines in their neighborhood will now be buried underground to prevent excess outages.
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The power cutoff settings, called Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings (EPSS), will now only affect the lines in the hills.
Teresa Alvarado, South Bay and Central Coast PG&E VP said that the system continues to improve despite the challenges in reliability.
“They’ve been incredibly beneficial in terms of wildfire safety, but of course the reliability challenges have been a problem," Alvarado said. "We have continued to improve not only the number of people impacted, but the duration of the outages over the past two and a half years.”
PG&E said nearly 10,000 customers were impacted in the Almaden and Santa Teresa areas when the safety switches were tripped. When this project finishes in June, the company said that most of these customers won't experience that anymore.
"So with this work, we are obviously continuing to improve wildfire safety as well as reliability for our customers in south San Jose," Alvarado said.
PG&E said this one project will cost around 11 million dollars and that it has plans for nine more projects like it in San Jose. The company has not yet responded to an inquiry on if the project is funded by current rates or if it will need a separate rate hike in the future to pay for the projects' price tag.
However, the project is a relief neighbors hope will keep the lights on.
"I talked to some guys a few weeks ago about the safety part and there will be less trouble for my neighbors. I think it’s a great idea," Gold said.
