San Francisco's top officials are again pressing state utility regulators to put Pacific Gas and Electric Co. under a public microscope, arguing that a year of large blackouts and new electrical fires show the city is not getting reliable service.
Mayor Daniel Lurie, City Attorney David Chiu, Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Dennis Herrera sent a letter Thursday to California Public Utilities Commission President John Reynolds asking for a formal public proceeding into PG&E's operations in the city, the San Francisco Chronicle and SF Standard reported.
Forty outages, and counting
The city says it has logged at least 40 unplanned outages since January that each hit 1,000 or more customer accounts and lasted more than 15 minutes — nearly one a week since the Dec. 20, 2025 Mission Substation fire darkened about a third of the city. That earlier blackout affected roughly 130,000 accounts by the city's count, with some neighborhoods dark for days. More than a quarter of the newer outages hit the west side, where December's outage lingered longest, the Standard reported.
Recent examples include rolling blackouts on March 20 from the Castro to Haight-Ashbury that affected about 14,000 customers, a July outage in the Richmond and Presidio that left about 9,500 without power, and another two days later from Glen Park to Bernal Heights that hit about 12,000. Hoodline reported that on Oct. 6 alone, about 2,694 customers lost power in Bayview and Visitacion Valley during another unplanned outage.
What the city wants investigated
Officials say the CPUC's Safety and Enforcement Division already opened a staff investigation after the Mission fire, but that probe has stayed closed to the public. The new letter asks for a broader proceeding that covers the December disaster, the outage streak, delayed infrastructure projects and whether the system can meet rising demand. The city also wants its own staff and consultants at the table.
Among the projects named is the Egbert Switching Station, once expected online in 2021 and now pushed to 2029. The letter also criticizes PG&E's plan to sell deactivated Substation I near the Mission site — a property the city says it hoped to acquire for backup capacity. Two recent underground vault fires tied to PG&E equipment, on Sept. 17 near Mission and First streets and on Oct. 1 downtown, are also cited.
PG&E spokesperson Tamar Sarkissian told reporters the company received the letter, is reviewing it and "remain[s] committed to safely serving our customers." Separately, the Board of Supervisors last month affirmed the environmental review for a possible city takeover of PG&E's local distribution system, adding political weight to the reliability fight.