Thursday, October 10, 2019

PG&E Turns To Esri After Major Website Issues During Blackouts

PG&E, California's largest utility, has turned to Redlands-based Esri, the help the utility cope with what has been a massive website failure on its part after it decided to shut down power in 34 Northern California counties after high winds and low humidity were forecast on Wednesday. PG&E shut down over 550,000 customer accounts on Wednesday, affecting what some have estimated to be as many as 2.5 million Californians, in an unprecedented, planned blackout for much of Northern California. Those blackouts even crept into Silicon Valley, where cities like San Jose, Santa Clara, and Morgan Hill were seeing blackouts through Thursday morning. During that time, PG&E's website crashed and was unavailable for the millions of Californians trying to determine if they would be subject to blackouts. In a tweet this morning, PG&E said it had created an "alternate website" for customers to check for potential impacts of a power shutoff; that link goes directly to ArcGIS, the geographical information systems (GIS) mapping software developed by Esri. It's unknown what the financial arrangement by PG&E and Esri looks like, or if the ability to handle the millions of people hitting the site is part of an existing contract between PG&E and Esri. Southern California is not immune to possible power shutdowns: Southern California Edison (SCE), and to a much smaller extent, San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) both have indicated the possibility of power shutoffs in Southern California on Thursday and Friday, also due to critical fire weather conditions. All of those utilities are exercising new Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) procedures, meant to minimize the possibility of catastrophic wildfires being sparked by electric lines.