Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) announced that it may conduct “safety power shutoffs” on Election Day.
The shutoffs are a result of “changing weather conditions,” the company said in a statement. Areas affected by the shutoffs include Western Sacramento Valley, the North Bay and parts of the East Bay.
According to the energy provider, conditions for a public safety power shutoff (PSPS) event include “low relative humidity, diminished moisture of vegetation and gusting wind conditions.”
While the company said the shutoffs would not affect polling locations, PG&E noted that it provides service for 7,000 polling locations and 48 tabulation centers. Five polling locations, however, were “identified as being in scope for a potential PSPS. PG&E has delivered temporary generation for each of these polling locations.”
If PG&E determined that power needs to be shut off, “it would occur after in-person voting has ended,” the company said.
Mark Quinlan, PG&E senior vice president of Wildfire, Emergency and Operations, said, “We know losing power is disruptive any day of the year, and especially on such an important day as today. We’ve been preparing for Election Day for over a month and are taking extraordinary measures to prevent outages at voting and tabulation centers, and pre-staging resources to quickly restore any service outages. Free and fair elections are a hallmark of our democracy, and we’re ready and proud to do our part to ensure that happens.”
