PG&E Launches Heatwave Outage Tracker

Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) just launched a new online tool to help customers track rotating power outages and planned blackouts that are triggered by heatwave activity.  It’s a great idea, especially for PG&E which has been under an extreme amount of scrutiny in recent years due to the company’s liability around wildfire deaths (which by the way would have been difficult for any company to predict and/or prevent).

How PG&E’s Heatwave Outage Tracker Works

In a nutshell, customers can use the tool to drill down to their specific neighborhood and find the status of local outage activity.  This is possible because the PG&E heatwave outage tool organizes customers by “circuit blocks” within its service territory.  This is akin to an index system that allows customers to pinpoint what is happening at their approximate location (aka circuit block), as long as they can manage the task of using a lookup tool to locate their specific block number. 

For PG&E customers, this represents yet another tool in their toolbox to keep tabs on rolling blackouts.  And this is just one of several steps the company has taken to improve customer communications.  In addition to the heatwave outage tracker, PG&E also communicates the information via social media, website, phone, text, or email, depending on each customer’s preferences.  The company’s stated goal is to restore power to customers experiencing a rolling black out within 2 hours after it starts. 

There is little doubt that PG&E operates in what seems like the equivalent of a war zone.  Between earthquakes, forest fires and mudslides, managing outages and customer expectations seems incredibly difficult. 

Kudos to PG&E for putting their best foot forward in this regard.  The company is doing what it can to fortify its grid and help its customers, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.  All I know is that this new heatwave outage tracker is yet another step in the right direction.