SDG&E and Planned Outage (power lines, credit, home) - City-Data Forum

djxpress · 04-07-2010, 09:30 PM

I got a letter in the mail today from SDG&E that says the following:

"...Beginning at approximately 8 PM on Monday, April 19th, 2010, your
electrical service will be interrupted for up to 10 hours...."

Basically, they are doing maintenance improvements to the power lines and related equipment.

I called the "Planned Outage Coordinator" and let her know that this was not good. In the 25 years I've been in SD, I've never been without power for more than a few hours. Even with the rolling blackouts a few years back, power was never off for more than 4-5 hours.

What I'd like to know is has anyone else experienced this sort of thing with SDG&E? What do you recommend doing in the downtime? I guess I could just go to sleep, but I'll have no radio, no alarm, nothing. It's going to be weird.

oBak · 04-07-2010, 09:45 PM

Tell ghost stories with the glow of candlelight.

mricu · 04-07-2010, 10:04 PM

I got a similar letter back in February telling us that our power will be out between 12 am and 5 am for upgrade to our meters to those new fancy computerized, digital meters. I didn't mind because I would be sleeping during that time and I use my cell phone as my alarm.

However, I don't think they actually went through with the power outage because none of your clocks that were plugged in were flashing or reset. Nor did they upgrade our meters.

djxpress · 04-07-2010, 10:15 PM

They upgraded our meters to the new digital ones. Our power was out for less than 1 minute.

oddstray · 04-08-2010, 09:04 PM

They've already upgraded our meters, and I think this outage is in addition to that.

My spousal unit phoned them today to complain. They said they were installing a 'Super Sexy Esoterically Named Special Switch'* that would affect 3000 users. He asked, "If you're affecting that many customers, why don't you provide alternate service for that long a period?". They couldn't give him any reasonable response.

He supposes that if he'd pushed the issue, they'd have suggested that he use a generator. Which begs the question, then who needs SDG&E in the first place. :-/

*Hmm, yeah. They named that switch so fast and mumble-y several times that my spousal unit never did catch the name of it.

BTW, there's an event on Saturday at the RP Doubletree talking about green and alternate energy. SDG&E is making it waaaaay tempting to go off the grid ...

DeanInPQ · 04-19-2010, 09:59 PM

8:55 PM and no outage yet...is this even going to happen at all?

DeanInPQ · 04-20-2010, 12:49 AM

I spoke too soon! Returned to a dark home at 11:15 pm.

Gentoo · 04-20-2010, 01:42 AM

They did this in East Mission Valley on Friday.

djxpress · 04-20-2010, 10:39 PM

So I got a call last night from an SDG&E lady who said they were having problems with their equipment and instead of starting at 8PM they needed to push it back to 9PM and power would be restored at 7AM instead of 6AM (since they pushed back the time by 1 hour).

So this morning, when the power was still out at 7AM I called the SDG&E contact, and she said that they were still working on the issue and they hoped to have power restored soon. I asked her if she could give me a credit for next months bill for the inconvenience, and she proceeded to let me know the power would be on as soon as possible...way to redirect my question, Robert Gibbs.