Pacific Gas & Electric Co, a unit of PG&E (NYSE:PCG), said on Tuesday it was extending a previously announced "public safety power shutoff" to 34 counties in northern and central California, marking the largest such precautionary outage the utility has undertaken to date.
The utility has warned that nearly 800,000 California homes and firms can expect to lose electricity for up to several days from Wednesday, in the planned PG&E power shutdown, due to heightened wildfire risks from high winds.
Sustained gale-force winds were expected to last through midday Thursday, with isolated gusts of up to 70 miles (about 120 kilometres) per hour, the utility said. Once power is turned off, it cannot be restored until winds subside, allowing PG&E to inspect equipment for damage and make any repairs.
PG&E has come under increased scrutiny in recent years over maintenance of transmission wires and other equipment implicated in a number of major wildfires.
In May, state fire investigators determined that PG&E transmission lines caused the deadliest and most destructive wildfire on record in California, the wind-driven Camp Fire that killed 85 people in and around the town of Paradise last year.
The scope of the planned outage, extending to over half of California’s 58 counties, will far exceed the very first public safety power shutoff declared by PG&E in October of last year, which impacted 60,000 customers.
PG&E filed for bankruptcy last January, citing potential civil liabilities in excess of $30 billion from the North Bay and Camp Fires.
Shares in PCG doffed eight cents to begin Wednesday at $10.82
