Still reeling from criticism for shutting off power to up to 2 million people this month to prevent fires, PG&E says it could have to do it again.
By Alex Johnson NBC News
Less than two weeks after it was slammed for cutting off power to hundreds of thousands of customers to prevent wildfires, California’s biggest utility said Monday it will likely have to do it again this week.
Pacific Gas & Electric Corp., or PG&E, said at a hastily arranged late afternoon news conference that it was calling, emailing and texting more than 200,000 customers in 15 Northern California counties to alert them that their power could be shut off for as long as 48 hours, starting Wednesday.
A power “customer” can be a single residence or a large business; the standard conversion utilities use assesses 2½ people per customer, meaning as many as a half-million people could be affected Wednesday. Most of the impact will be felt in the Sierra Foothills and the northern part of the San Francisco Bay area, the utility said.
