Outage lasted between two and four hours in some areas of
city
Morgan Hill – Friday night’s three-hour power outage affected more than 2,500 households in the north and northeast portion of the city, but half of downtown was also affected, causing local business to lose money.
The power went out at 6:50pm, and some areas had power returned by 9pm, while some didn’t have power again until after 10pm.
Rosy Bergin, of Rosy’s at the Beach, said many reservations had to be canceled, mainly reservations for families taking their Live Oak High graduates to dinner.
“It was disappointing, we just felt so bad that we had to call these people and tell them we wouldn’t be able to accommodate them,” she said. “It was sad, too, to see the people who hadn’t gotten the word, maybe relatives and friends, showing up with balloons, presents, cakes.”
The outage may have cost the restaurant close to $4,000 in sales Friday night.
Other downtown businesses suffered as well. Poppy’s Fish, Poultry & More on Third Street had planned to take advantage of downtown’s Friday Night Music Series to make sales. John JH Kim of Simple Beverages & Cigar said he probably lost about $1,000 in sales.
Bergin pointed out that only the east side of the downtown strip was without power.
“The good thing is that all of downtown was not shut down,” she said. “At least the other side of the street was able to do business. It would have been really bad for downtown if everyone had been without power.”
Rosy’s patio remained open, serving cocktails, wine and salads.
BookSmart co-owner Brad Jones said his business sold as much ice cream Friday night as they did during one day of the Mushroom Mardi Gras in May.
“We were so busy we couldn’t step out the door,” he said. “A lot of people were downtown. As far as I could tell, the music series was really rocking.”
The majority of customers were able to have their light and air conditioners restored by 10pm, as PG&E workers were unable to find problems with the line and turned it back on.
The remaining 13 customers without power had the electricity restored by 10:40pm, Smith said.
“It’s a really good thing we have this fail-safe,” Smith said. “If you have too much current on a line, for whatever reason, you risk burning out that line. And that’s a really long power outage.”
Smith said the estimated length of outages is always given liberally, and workers are frequently able to find and correct the problem quicker than the estimated time.
The power lines have a series of defaults, Smith explained, to protect the lines and equipment. A manual switch, called a “recloser” registers that there is too much current on the line, it opens up and prevents the current from traveling across the line, he said. The reason for the excess current could be anything, a tree branch brushing the line, a squirrel, or lines bumping together.
The recloser will automatically try to close again, Smith said, in case the increase in current is incidental. This is what causes power flickers, when the recloser opens, then tries to close again and is successful.
However, as was the case Friday night, when the recloser registers too much current on the second attempt, it will stay open, preventing current flow, until it is manually reclosed. When this occurs, PG&E workers must inspect the line, and if they find no obvious obstruction, such as a tree branch, they must continue inspecting the entire line, Smith said.
“This can be very time-consuming,” he said. “That’s what happened Friday. There was no obstruction, so the whole line was checked, then the reclosers were manually closed.”
So the reason for Friday’s outage, he said, was too much current on the line, but what caused the excess could have been gusty winds.
