Potential Public Safety Power Shutoff Period Begins

Update by Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management
Southern California Edison (SCE) has notified customers that it is considering a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) to multiple areas in Southern Santa Barbara County due to an increased risk for wildfires. The PSPS outage may impact multiple areas south of Gaviota to Carpinteria. This outage may begin as soon as Monday evening (December 7), though it may occur earlier or later depending on actual weather conditions. If you live or work in this area, you should make preparations for a possible multiple day power outage.
Check in on your friends and neighbors and make sure they are prepared. SCE will staff a Community Crew Vehicle at the Louis Lowry Davis Center, 1232 De La Vina St, Santa Barbara, CA 93101 from 8AM-10PM on Tuesday, December 8, 2020. Call SCE directly at 800-655-4555 or visit www.sce.com/psps with questions related to this potential outage.
Visit www.ReadySBC.org for tips on how to prepare and to view the interactive PSPS map. We understand that customers may receive notifications from multiple sources alerting them to a possible PSPS. It is our intention to ensure messages are received by all impacted community members so that appropriate safety measures can be taken.
Source: City of Goleta
The City of Goleta has learned that due to forecast fire weather conditions, Southern California Edison (SCE) is exploring a potential Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) of electrical lines in Santa Barbara County including areas of Goleta. The PSPS consideration period is from 9:00 p.m. tonight, December 7, and extends through tomorrow, December 8 at 6 p.m., though could occur earlier or later depending on actual weather conditions.
SCE has made initial contact with customers in the affected circuits about the potential for shutoff. For more info and to see if your address is in the impacted area visit www.sce.com/psps.
Please make sure you are registered for emergency alerts from the Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management (SBCOEM) at www.ReadySBC.org. Also, sign up to receive alerts from SCE as well, go to www.sce.com/wildfire/psps-alerts.
Helpful Links:
- PDFs of High Fire Risk Area (HFRA) circuit maps and GIS layers may be found, by county, at sce.com/maps.
- Access SCE’s non-PSPS outage information page at sce.com/outages.
- Access information on weather conditions at sce.com/fireweather.
- The City of Goleta has put together tips how to prepare for a multi-day power outage including knowing how to manually open your automatic garage door and having a battery-operated radio. Click here to learn more.
The City of Goleta is in close contact with SCE and our community partners and will provide any updates as they relate to Goleta.
30 Comments
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Dec 07, 2020 05:59 PMIs Edison serious? A monopolistic utility company is considering shutting off power to people in homes that are already required to be home unless for essential work and the temperature is at low of 41? At what point will Edison be required to supply neighborhoods with generators with small transmission lines limiting there powerline liability?
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Dec 07, 2020 06:21 PMMillimesa: What the F do you think "serious" is? Yes, when winds threaten to spark fires that have destroyed more of California than anytime in past history and have killed hundred and made homeless thousands of your neighbors, you need to take a deep breath and understand things are related. The lack of electrical service to you is not personal. Had SCE and others acted this way over the past few years we would have a lot less disaster to make up for now.
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Dec 07, 2020 06:22 PMIf they get sued for every time one of their sparks causes a fire - then yes they are serious.
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Dec 07, 2020 06:31 PMMillimesa is right. Edison neglects caring for its 100 year old lines, doesn't invest in critical infrastructure upgrade, then shifts the responsibility for dealing with all of this onto us - a populace trapped at home, many of us with freezers full of food due to the pandemic, and people working from home. Edison gets sued for negligence in maintaining its infrastructure, and then their solution is that every time we have hot and windy weather they'll shut off our power for days? That is totally unacceptable in the first world.
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Dec 07, 2020 08:37 PMAre we sure we're still "first world"?
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Dec 08, 2020 07:06 AMThe only real solution is to invest in solar energy.
Lots of bugs to work out still - but in the end - that's what we need.
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Dec 08, 2020 09:34 AM3P14159, Solar generated electricity will be transmitted over the same power lines. SO how does solar solve this particular problem?
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Dec 08, 2020 04:11 PMResident, if you have your own solar panels you can set it up to disconnect from the grid and use your own power, right? Or draw from your battery storage and your Prius. Only way to go because SCE doesn't care if you have power or not.
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Dec 07, 2020 06:41 PMI still have my frozen gallon jugs in the garage freezer from the last PSPS. This is adding insult to injury. California needs new leadership at all levels. The lawyers must have decreed that the only solutions are shut down and power down. We need more creativity than that.
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Dec 07, 2020 06:45 PMMy freezer's base is large jugs of frozen water. We need that for earthquake prep!
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Dec 07, 2020 06:52 PMShasta, the state needs an infrastructure rebuild, starting with power. If the utilities won't clear the areas around transmission lines, then they need to bury them. Is expecting some maintenance asking too much? Also, they should not pass on the expense of law suits to their paying customers---that's insulting. Let them eat that cost, and if they file for bankruptcy let someone else buy them for pennies on the dollar and (hopefully) run things better. The someone else could easily be the people of the state of California. Make it a consumer cooperative, owned by the citizens of California, and sell the energy at cost. If taxpayers have to bear the legal and financial brunt of the utilities' incompetence, we might as well own the thing.
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Dec 08, 2020 10:19 AMA lot of us do not have garage freezers. But I do have some of those Blue Ice packs in my regular kitchen freezer. They help hold the cold.
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Dec 07, 2020 06:44 PMI finally got my notice from the county, not Edison. After reading about it in national newspapers and checking my area. I'm in SB City, certainly in what Edison's map says is at risk. No wind since early afternoon, but my trees were almost denuded in 2-3 hours starting by 11 am. today. Thanks, Edison.
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Dec 07, 2020 06:47 PMI have to clarify I'm not totally against power shutoffs. Just mad at their notification. I thought it was because I have solar as my major supplier. But no, must just be Edison's crappy notification system.
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Dec 07, 2020 06:46 PMYeah, when everyone could get burned out they need to shut it down. Get used to it Shasta and Millimesa. We just got through a scheduled all day (8-8) power out in my neighborhood yesterday for upgrades. Sometimes you gotta deal with stuff. If your name's Shasta I'd think you'd have insight into the NorCal tradegies the last year or two up there. Cmon, think about it.
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Dec 07, 2020 06:57 PMEdison is still half-baking the alert system after this long time! I signed up for phone, e-mails, voice, and am in the area of possible PSPS. Nothing came from Edison. County did send out text and e-mails.
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Dec 07, 2020 07:22 PMSeems with the red flag condition and the wind advisory both already forecast for couple of days, they could have given us at least a day's notice that it MIGHT be necessary. I got my first notice just before 3pm. No wind here now at 7:20, near Sheffield Reservoir. Still air and cooling off at this point.
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Dec 07, 2020 09:40 PMSCE and PGE may be monopolies, but they are heavily government regulated utilities. It’s easy to blame them for not taking care of infrastructure, but will the same degree of blame be placed on multi billion dollar regulatory mandates on alternative energy development thus preventing them having resources to harden their grids? Corporations can make stupid, greedy decisions, and governments can demand cost prohibitive stupid regulation. With a heavily regulated public utility, you get both: corporate stupid + government stupid that can no longer provide uninterruptible, safe, affordable power. It will take new government leadership and new corporate leadership to get affordable, safe, and uninterruptible power back in California.
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Dec 08, 2020 07:56 AMyou all are expecting alot from a company that paid all its profits out to the higher ups, now they dont have funds to even repair what they already have, let alone bury all of them.
heres capitalism at its best, over blown bloated monopoly that cant even manage their own infrastructure, but we are supposed to be happy with them.
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Dec 08, 2020 08:18 AMI'm with you, PSTARSR. Utilities paid big dividends to shareholders and big money to executives, and invested almost nothing in improving infrastructure for many many years.
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Dec 08, 2020 09:25 AMI signed up for email notification via their psps website (for my zipcode) and like mtndriver, I got emailed early yesterday PM. Yes, some high winds were in the area prior to then, but I think the system worked fine this time.
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Dec 08, 2020 09:39 AMThere was a big fire near the Santa Paula Airport yesterday caused by a large tree blowing over into power lines. Evacuations were required. Isn't turning off the power in those lines for a few hours preferable to dealing with a fire?
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Dec 08, 2020 09:59 AMMulti-day power outage when we are basically being told not to leave our homes. I swear they’re just trying to break out spirit now.
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Dec 08, 2020 01:21 PMSince we've never had a real shutdown, feel free to go out and experience the spirit of COVID right now.
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Dec 08, 2020 10:21 AMI guess that SCE is geographically challenged as our many local residents.
Their news release and phone messages include "The PSPS outage may impact multiple areas south of Gaviota to Carpinteria."
Just to keep it correct (and add a little humor) "south of Gaviota" is straight out into the Ocean. I do understand what they mean in this case. However, when incorrect geographic directions have been used by various agencies during evacuations, it can really confuse people.
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Dec 08, 2020 04:08 PMMaybe they think they supply power to the offshore oil platforms? But they have their own generators and fossil fuel!
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Dec 08, 2020 10:39 AMThose of you who would like Edison to bury their above-ground lines, "Burying power lines costs roughly US$1 million per mile, but the geography or population density of the service area can halve this cost or triple it." So we are talking about a huge investment in infrastructure to do this. No way Edison has this $ sitting in a bank somewhere. So we are talking big tax increases, or shifting priorities from defense spending to line burying. Hard choices. https://theconversation.com/why-doesnt-the-u-s-bury-its-power-lines-104829
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Dec 08, 2020 05:44 PMThanks for bringing the cost up again. I was too lazy to look it up.
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Dec 08, 2020 03:20 PMThe answer is local alternative energy. Get rid of the unsightly, expensive, dangerous power lines. Even if we do spend the $$ to repair power lines, the problems of finite (gonna run out) fossil fuel resources and global warming still exist.
Electric cars are great when you don't think past the plug. Nuclear ? Nuclear power is the worst, both environmentally and economically. Proof: the Japanese 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster. "The Japan Center for Economic Research, a private think tank, said the cleanup costs could mount to some $470 billion to $660 billion, however." (Scientific American 2018) That doesn't include all the other expenses, like housing loss, medical, etc. , and who knows what else is happening on the ocean floor.
The answer is local alternative energy. Whatever is done it will cost us $$ one way or the other. I don't know who would be the company to build a local power structure with solar and wind, maybe SCEdison . The people and our local gov't would have to want it.
Reliable ? it could be . There are ways to locally store energy. We've got to stop taking the biggest hammer ( BIG POWER ) to solve our problems. "Soft energy Paths" by Amory Lovins is a book that explains how and why. He lectured in SB in the late 70's, which is when we should have gone in this direction. With our mountains, wind, and sun..... SB could be self-sufficent
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Dec 08, 2020 03:48 PMI wish our highways were owned by industry, we could sue them for accidents and delays