Quick Take:
More than 17,000 homes across Santa Cruz County were without power for hours on Wednesday afternoon and evening. Per PG&E, the outage was caused by a substation malfunction in Santa Cruz.
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Many Santa Cruz residents came home to dark residences on Wednesday evening due to a power outage that left thousands of Pacific Gas & Electric customers without electricity. The outage reportedly started at 3:27 p.m.
According to a PG&E spokesperson, 17,471 customers living on the upper and lower Westside of Santa Cruz, Pasatiempo, Capitola and Soquel were affected by the outage.
Around 6:45 p.m., power was restored for 6,409 customers, leaving 11,062 still in the dark. All restorations were in the city of Santa Cruz. Most of the remaining customers saw their power restored by late evening.
On Thursday afternoon, a PG&E spokesperson told Lookout that the outage was caused by a substation malfunction in Santa Cruz. Because substations supply electricity to multiple neighborhoods, a malfunction can affect all of those areas.
The National Weather Service was forecasting widespread rain across the Bay Area and Central Coast on Thursday morning, with more expected over the weekend after a break Friday.