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Southern California Edison outlines PSPS procedures, customer resources and grid-hardening work for Carpinteria
Summary
SCE told the council about outage classifications, PSPS notification timelines, community resource centers, grid-hardening measures (covered conductor, targeted undergrounding) and programs for medically dependent customers; officials promised follow-up data on local outage causes.
Natalie Yanez, government relations manager for Southern California Edison, told the council how SCE notifies customers of outages and how the utility is working to reduce PSPS impacts through grid hardening and customer support.
Yanez described three outage types (planned maintenance, unplanned/repair, emergent) and two duration categories (momentary under five minutes, sustained over five minutes). She recommended that residents sign up for account-level alerts and the outage map and said non-account holders can register address-level alerts or PSPS alerts at the SCE PSPS signup. "If you encounter a downed power line, we encourage you to stay away and call 911," she said, stressing safety around energized lines.
On PSPS operations, SCE activates incident-management teams three days before a predicted event and notifies public-safety partners and customers simultaneously; updates continue as weather forecasts evolve. In January's events SCE identified 90 instances of equipment compromise and has since accelerated monitoring and notification practices.
Yanez outlined grid-hardening work on the South Coast: SCE has completed roughly 119 miles of covered conductor, plans an additional 161 miles and 15 miles of targeted undergrounding in the region, and uses remote-control switches and expanded vegetation-management teams. She said targeted undergrounding can take 18 months to four years and estimated costs ranging from about $1,000,000 per circuit mile for covered conductor to between $1 million and $10 million per mile for undergrounding, funded through rates and regulated by the CPUC.
Council members asked whether outages are detected automatically or require customer reports; Yanez said both systems are used and encouraged residents to report outages on the outage map or by phone when their power is out. On local outage causes at Casitas Pass and Carpinteria Avenue, she said SCE's outage system requires verification and that an operations follow-up could provide cause after two weeks of system validation.
Public commenters described recent prolonged outages and their consequences for medical care and communications. Yanez offered to return with the city when 2025 reliability data are released and to provide flyers and online resources for distribution.
