Quick Take
Nearly 19,000 in Santa Cruz County, mainly in and around Aptos, were without power Tuesday morning. PG&E spokesperson Stephanie Magallon told Lookout the outage was triggered after crews switched residents to a different source of electricity.
Nearly 19,000 residents in Santa Cruz County were without power Tuesday morning, according to Pacific Gas & Electric.
The outage, affecting residents in the Aptos and Corralitos areas, began around 9 a.m. Tuesday, said spokesperson Stephanie Magallon. She added that the outage was triggered after crews in Soquel switched customers over to a different power line that was already overwhelmed with powering most of Santa Cruz County as PG&E conducts maintenance work.
When crews work on power lines, they need the electricity to be off, said Magallon, or else they’d get electrocuted. To ensure that residents do not lose power during those maintenance days, PG&E transfers them to a different source of electricity.
Power was expected to be restored within the next few hours, Magallon said. Crews were able to restore power to at least 2,000 customers within the first hour, bringing down the number of people affected to 14,000.
Aptos residents have also been experiencing frequent power outages in the area throughout the summer. Magallon told Lookout those outages are likely caused by PG&E’s Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings (EPSS) systems. The EPSS systems are easily triggered by branches falling onto power lines, which shut off power within a tenth of a second to prevent a fire, she said.
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