"Erroneous signal" sent during compliance testing blamed for causing massive El Dorado County power outage
EL DORADO HILLS – PG&E customers across large swaths of El Dorado County dealt with power outages on Wednesday morning.
About 73,000 PG&E customers were without power from El Dorado Hills to the Pollock Pines area at the height of the outage. At first, there were more than 80,000 customers without power in the El Dorado County area, according to a PG&E spokesperson.
We were just informed by PG&E of a power outage impacting most of the County and that PG&E is trying to find the cause. Stay tuned for updates as we have them.
— County of El Dorado (@CountyElDorado) August 24, 2022
By 11:45 a.m., PG&E said that number had dropped to 1,156 customers. All customers were restored by 2 p.m.
"Yeah, it was last minute." said Mary Fulmer, owner of Hog Wild BBQ in Placerville. Fulmer said the restaurant was in the middle of a catering order when the power went out and had to pivot to keep the food at a safe temperature, whether hot or cold.
Fulmer said the power was back on "very quickly" and was grateful to PG&E for the service.
According to PG&E's outage map, power wasn't expected to be restored until about 2:30 p.m. Wednesday for some areas. Other areas had an even later time of after 4 p.m. for estimated restoration.
City of Placerville In a post on social media, the City of Placerville confirmed that the problem likely originated from a failed substation in El Dorado Hills. CBS13 asked PG&E to confirm this information and were told that the company does not share specific substation locations "due to security concerns."
A PG&E official said the problem stemmed from an "erroneous signal" sent to a piece of equipment while crews were doing some compliance testing. The signal caused several transmission lines and substations to be deenergized.