The power outage Thursday morning that caused over 22,000 Monterey Peninsula customers to go dark, snarled traffic and forced businesses to temporarily close was due to equipment failure, according to a PG&E spokesperson.
For several days residents reported momentary outages, as well as noises coming from the Del Monte substation in Monterey. PG&E crews inspected the equipment as reports came in but no damage was found, says Mayra Tostado in an email. With no damage found, and the system performing normally during inspection, no repairs were scheduled.
Then early Thursday morning, after another interruption in service, substation engineers were able to pinpoint the cause and locate damaged equipment.
"To improve reliability and repair damaged equipment, PG&E's Del Monte substation team acted quickly to develop a plan to fix the issue," Tostado says. The plan included taking the substation out of service to safely complete repairs.