San Jose's mayor advised PG&E on Thursday that the city will seek legal action if the utility doesn't present an urgent plan to replace or repair its failing infrastructure after more than 30,000 households and three hospitals experienced power outages amid this week's heat wave.
Residents and businesses were left in the dark for several hours, and one hospital, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, lost air conditioning, lighting equipment and computer access following a failure of backup generators. Regional Medical Center of San Jose and O'Connor Hospital were the other two hospitals affected by the outages.
Mayor Sam Liccardo said in a statement that if PG&E fails to make changes the city would seek a court injunction or a California Public Utilities Commission order mandating that the company address the issues.
“I have deep concerns about the safety of our residents and the viability of San Jose small businesses struggling against ongoing failures of a power grid hampered by poor maintenance and outdated equipment,” Liccardo said.
The mayor cited blown transformers as causing this week's outages that left people without power or a cellphone connection to receive help.
Some East San Jose neighborhoods, in the retail area of Tully and King roads, reported that the power outages struck down cellular networks operated by AT&T, making it impossible for people to make phone calls or send text messages to seek help, according to the mayor's office.
“This is unacceptable. We need to better understand why these failures disproportionately afflict PG&E's operations in San Jose," Liccardo said in the statement. "More importantly, we need to get them fixed -- whether PG&E does so voluntarily, or under judicial or regulatory mandate. We can no longer merely hope that PG&E will live up to its obligation to San Jose ratepayers to do so.”
Hey, but don’t forget to plug your electric cars in to that failing grid!
Failing Electric Grid and inadequate Power Generation mix,
but what do these City officials do? Virtue Signal.
Lets put more mandates and restrictions our residents, so they are more dependent on electricity.
That way when the electric grid goes down or is not able to support the loads the
“serfs” will not be able to:
– cook on their Natural Gas stovetops or ovens,
– have access to Hot Water from their Natural Gas water heaters,
– have comforting and life-saving Natural Gas furnace heat for their homes in the cold of winter,
– have a clean burning Natural Gas fireplace insert for family gatherings and atmosphere,
– and as mentioned above be able to charge their cars to flee dangers or go out to obtain necessary food, medicine, emergency health care or
other needed quality of life items.
Don’t you just love the “Freedom” that California provides?
Let’s not forget that Liccardo voted to eliminate natural gas appliances in San Jose, further increasing the load on a legislatively hampered grid.
Liccardo points one finger @ PGE and three at himself…. Can’t wait until he is out of office.
Good to hear the Mayor has taken action. We had three power outages during the high heat and lost residential Wifi service each time. We couldn’t access the internet via LTE/5G either (even after disabling the Wifi settings on smartphones). AT&T told us to change out our SIM cards to deal with the situation, but that apparently was not the problem.
Twice-bankrupted PG&E has been bailed out by We the People in the hope that they would improve their service. Perhaps it is time to use eminent domain powers to buy up PG&E’s assets. Silicon Valley Clean Energy has shown that public control works better than private control in accomplishing goals that We the People want (better service, lower prices, subsidies for energy efficiency, etc.). As a huge corporation pursuing the single value of profit, PG&E has demonstrated again the message of the film The Corporation — corporations act in sociopathic ways to maximize profit.