PG&E chief praises service restorations as supervisor blasts repeated outages

Singh said the company endured the most severe storm to ever hit PG&E’s service territory during a Christmas holiday. He thanked customers for “your patience and grace during this event” and praised crews for getting the power back on.

“We restored nearly 750,000 customers that were affected by these severe storms -- 87% of the restoration was completed within 12 hours of an outage and nearly 95 percent of the restoration was completed within 24 hours of the outage,” Singh said.

“As of Friday afternoon, 95% of all affected customers were restored,” he said.

One of the largest utility companies in the U.S., PG&E provides gas and electric service to about 16 million people in Northern and Central California.

Still, San Francisco Supervisor Alan Wong said about 6,000 customers in parts of the Sunset District lost electricity Saturday from about 11 a.m. to about 2 p.m. He said it was their fifth power outage in recent weeks.

“The repeated outages have been disruptive and deeply frustrating for residents, seniors and small businesses who continue to face uncertainty and economic hardship,” Wong said in a statement.

Wong said he has complained to PG&E about blackouts in the Sunset District on Dec. 7 and Dec. 10. Those occurred prior to a citywide outage on Dec. 20 that left some Sunset residents without power for up to three days, he said.

In his video, Singh said PG&E has an “unwavering commitment” to performance.

“We’re listening to you, our customers and elected officials, about our response and we commit ourselves to getting better every single day,” Singh said, “because that’s what you as our customers deserve and what we expect from ourselves.”