Power restored to 1.4 million customers in southwestern California

Power restored to 1.4 million customers in southwestern California

2011-09-10 02:03:26 GMT+7 (ICT)

SAN DIEGO (BNO NEWS) -- Power was restored to all 1.4 million customers of San Diego Gas & Electric on Friday following a massive blackout that affected southern California, Arizona, and parts of Mexico.

San Diego Gas & Electric announced in a statement that power was restored early Friday at 3.25 a.m. local time, almost 12 hours after a major electric transmission system outage in western Arizona resulted in the most widespread power outage in the company's history. The company has called for energy conservation throughout Friday, asking customers to use fans rather than air conditioning.

"Restoring power in the aftermath of the loss of the entire local grid serving San Diego and southern Orange counties was a monumental task," said David Geier, vice president of electric operations. "The restoration process, however, has left our local power grid very fragile and we are asking our customers to conserve electricity throughout the day Friday."


Power was restored Thursday night and early Friday morning for many of the about 4 million customers who lost power Thursday afternoon in San Diego and Orange counties, the Inland Empire and parts of Mexico. It was unclear how many remained without power on Friday afternoon.

The biggest outage, however, was in San Diego County, where people were trapped in elevators and theme park rides, and outbound flights had to be cancelled. All public schools in San Diego County were expected to remain closed Friday.

Officials said the blackout was triggered by a mishap on a high-voltage power line linking Arizona and San Diego. APS, which is Arizona's largest electric utility, said a worker was carrying out a procedure at a nearby substation when the blackout occurred.



"The outage appears to be related to a procedure an APS employee was carrying out in the North Gila substation," an APS spokesman said in a statement. "Operating and protection protocols typically would have isolated the resulting outage to the Yuma area. The reason that did not occur in this case will be the focal point of the investigation into the event, which already is underway."

A multi-agency investigation is being launched to determine the cause of the outage.

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