PG&E's Largest Shutoff Since 2020: What 80,000+ Californians Are Learning the Hard Way
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On Wednesday evening, October 14, 2026, PG&E started turning off power to prevent wildfires — and by Thursday morning an estimated 87,475 customers across 29 counties were in the dark. PG&E itself calls it the largest Public Safety Power Shutoff since 2020.
The scope kept growing all week: about 30,000 customers on Monday, 70,000 on Tuesday, roughly 88,000 by Wednesday. By Friday, some Bay Area homes were entering their second day without electricity, with PG&E estimating restoration around 4 p.m. Friday for the East Bay and 7 p.m. for the North Bay.
Some of the hardest-hit counties: Calaveras (nearly 10,800 customers), El Dorado (8,800), San Luis Obispo (8,800), Madera (7,300), Tuolumne (7,200), Alameda (4,700), Placer (5,300). About 5,500 Medical Baseline customers — people who depend on power for medical needs — were in scope too.
What a planned shutoff actually costs a household
A PSPS is the rare outage you can see coming, and it still hurts:
- A fridge full of food. 24–48 hours without refrigeration spoils hundreds of dollars of groceries.
- No work from home. Router, modem, laptop — gone. Two days of it, mid-week.
- Phones dying. PG&E opened 40+ Community Resource Centers across 25 counties just so people could charge devices, get Wi-Fi, water, and blankets.
- Medical equipment. 5,500 Medical Baseline customers had to scramble — CPAPs, powered wheelchairs, and refrigerated medication don't wait for restoration estimates.
PG&E said this event could run through Saturday afternoon, October 17. The weather behind it — dry offshore Diablo winds and bone-dry vegetation — is only getting more common. This is outage season in California now.
The honest fix: your own power, sitting in the garage
Generators are the old answer, and they come with noise, fumes, and gas runs during an outage. The modern answer is simpler: a portable power station — a big, silent battery you charge from the wall (or solar panels) before the shutoff notice hits.
What one actually runs:
- A 1 kWh station keeps a full-size fridge going for roughly 10–12 hours, or charges a phone 60+ times, or runs a CPAP all night with power to spare.
- Add a foldable solar panel, and it recharges itself during the day — a shutoff that lasts two days stops mattering.
- No fuel, no fumes, no noise. Safe to run indoors.
The households riding out this week's PSPS comfortably are the ones who bought their station before the notification text arrived. Outage-season math is simple: one spoiled fridge of groceries costs a few hundred dollars. A decent 1 kWh station costs about the same — once — and works for years.
If this week's news made you think twice
Browse our portable power stations and solar panels & kits — US-based, free shipping, 1–2 week delivery, 30-day returns. Storm season and fire season aren't waiting. Neither should your backup plan.
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