The No-Blackout Bunch

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The No-Blackout Bunch

For 43% of PG&E's customers, the energy crisis will never hit home Matthew Yi, Don Fogleson, Chronicle Staff Writers Wednesday, January 24, 2001 ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/24/MN162684.DTL

While ominous warnings of rolling blackouts weigh heavily on the minds of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers, nearly half of them have nothing to fret about.

That's because 43 percent, or 1.9 million, of PG&E's customers are exempt from the outages -- though most probably aren't even aware of it.

In other words, just over half of those who fork over money to PG&E each month carry the load for everyone else whenever the utility has to pull the plug.

That had customers fuming yesterday.

"Everyone is paying for electricity, so it shouldn't have to happen to just half the people," said Jeanne Pinto, a 21-year-old San Franciscan who was among those sitting in the dark during last week's rolling outages. "It's unfair."

That may be true, but PG&E said there isn't much it can do about it.

Those folks lucky enough to enjoy an exemption share electrical circuits with one of PG&E's 1,500 "essential" customers -- which include hospitals, police stations and the like.

Just happen to live down the street from a state prison? Share a cul-de-sac with a fire station? It likely buys you a blackout exemption from PG&E because the utility can't cut power to one customer while leaving another intact.

"You can't just turn one customer (on or off). You have to exempt the entire circuit," said PG&E spokesman Jon Tremayne.

Tremayne explained that PG&E, which serves customers from Bakersfield to the Oregon border, divides its users into 14 blocks of about 200,000 customers apiece. Those 14 blocks take turns staying in the dark during energy-crunch times. Exempt customers are in "Block 50."

While future rolling blackouts could be a regular happening in the Bay Area,

being immune to the dark side was welcome news for some PG&E customers.

"That's cool!" said Gerry Giacometti, 50, looking at the first page of her electric bill yesterday and seeing the Block 50 designation.

She and her husband, Bill Giacometti, 54, own a two-story home in Oakland's Montclair neighborhood. They can thank their lucky stars that the Oakland Fire Department's station No. 24 is just a short walk down the street.

They had been preparing for the worst in the past week, making sure their flashlights had new batteries as well as keeping candles within easy reach.

"I've been trying to cut back electricity here myself . . . shutting off one of our refrigerators, changing our light bulbs with (energy-efficient) ones," Gerry Giacometti said. "We even turned off our furnace. . . . Everything goes off at night, and we just slip underneath our down comforter (when we go to bed)."

But that was before they took a close look at their electric bill and were, so to speak, illuminated.

And they don't feel badly for their neighbors who might not be so lucky.

"The guilt hasn't set in yet," Bill Giacometti said with a smile.

Plain old luck plays a huge role in getting a coveted "Block 50" designation. For example, there's no guarantee that a house sitting across the street from a fire station will be exempt.

PG&E spokesman Tremayne said the utility's electrical circuits run haywire, and neighbors don't necessarily share a circuit.

"We have circuits in the (Sierra) foothills that go on for miles and miles and miles," Tremayne said.

The same PG&E block, he said, could include customers in San Francisco, Oakland, Chico and Redding. Some part of San Francisco is included in all of the 14 active blocks, Tremayne said, so that any time there is a blackout, some neighborhood in the city by the bay will be fumbling around in the dark.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finding Your Rotating Outage Block

PG&E cuts electricity to selected areas, or blocks, when needed to keep the state's power grid from collapsing. There are 14 blocks in PG&E's service area.

Blocks 1 through 8, and part of Block 9, have been affected in rolling blackouts so far since June. PG&E will resume cuts in Block No. 9 if rolling blackouts become necessary.

Customers can determine which block they occupy by looking for the words "Rotating Outage Block" followed by a number. If those words do not appear on the bill, the customer shares an electrical circuit with an "essential service" that is exempt from service cuts.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 24, 2001


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