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Outraged News 8 Viewer: Why is SDG&E planning outages during this heat?

As San Diego continues to swelter in the summer heat, an Encinitas woman is raising concerns about a SDG&E planned power outage.

SAN DIEGO (NEWS 8) – As San Diego continues to swelter in the summer heat, an Encinitas woman is raising concerns about a SDG&E planned power outage.

Sarah, who asked News 8 to only use her first name, is questioning why the eight-hour-long power outage would be planned for one of the hottest months.

She told News 8 she is worried about the safety of her neighbors. “This is the works month to have power outages, especially for this amount of time. It’s a safety issue for kids and older adults to be in heat for eight-and-a-half hours.”

The power outage in Sarah’s Encinitas neighborhood is part of a routine maintenance, according to SDG&E. The utility said the planned outage would affect about 85 customers.

Further, SDG&E said it had sent out a notice about a month ago for an eight-hour outage on July 27th. The utility claims it had followed similar process for the planned August 2nd power outage.

“We prepared starting the night before. We have pets. We purchased backup generators. We purchased coolers because for that long period with not having power our food would spoil,” said Sarah.

The July 27th outage never happened. It got canceled because of the heat wave. “We kept an eye on it and once we decided the heat wave would be prolonged and affect much of the state, we evaluated all planned outages and cancelled a vast majority of them,” said Allison Torres with SDG&E.

Sarah said she did not know and called SDG&E where she was told to check their website. The website indicated the August 2nd outage would take place. She prepared and this time the lights did in fact go out as scheduled, but she remains frustrated because the outage took place during summer.

“September and August are not safe times for people with issues and homebound to allow those to have power. No essentials, food that will spoil over that time period.”

SDG&E said it does not consider the weather when planning outages – pointing to the previously cancelled one during the heat wave. Generally that only happens when the forecast at Miramar is above 92 degrees. On Thursday it was 91.

“I know and understand it can be inconvenient, but we are hoping they understand it is for the reliability of the system,” said Torres.

SDG&E does have another planned outage for Friday in the Encinitas region, but no customers are expected to be affected. You can check the SDG&E power outage map here

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