A scheduled maintenance power outage conducted by Southern California Edison planned for later this month has been cancelled following complaints from customers amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The maintenance outage was scheduled for March 26 for portions of Goleta, according to local resident John Bouregy.
Mr. Bouregy said he received information in the mail from SCE at his home, located on Warwick Place in Goleta. The mailer said the outage was for maintenance on the electrical system and provided an outage reference number, 1054096.
Mr. Bouregy said he contacted a SCE representative and California Public Utilities Commission spokesman on Monday.
“People were calling in and complaining about this because as I told SoCal Edison, if people don’t call you and let you know you’re gonna think everything is fine but this is crazy,” Mr. Bouregy said.
“They (SCE) were supposed to do this maintenance I think about a month or so ago. We were sent the notification and everybody did what they had to do, empty your freezer, get ice and stuff like that then they never did it. It wasn’t like it was urgent, critical, hazardous,” Mr. Bouregy said.
A search on SCE’s website states that the planned outage had been cancelled.
“Due to certain conditions we have cancelled this outage. Thank you for your patience and understanding,” the message wrote.
When reached for comment Wednesday, SCE spokesman David Song told the News-Press that the local district reported the outage was canceled, though it was possible that not all customers were notified.
“Customer notification will take place to all impacted customers. We have been canceling or postponing many outages across our service area and it might take a few days for all customers to be notified,” he said. “Priority are those outages/customers that were scheduled to take place earliest.”
Mr. Song said some scheduled outages related to wildfire mitigation will proceed as planned.
To view other scheduled power outages, visit www.sce.com/outage-center.
email: pgonzalez@newspress.com
