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Thousands of Monterey County residents got off to a rough start Thursday morning when they woke up without power.

Shortly after 5:30 a.m., around 22,000 customers in Monterey County lost power after a problem was detected at PG&E’s Del Monte Substation in Monterey. After inspection, PG&E electricians found damaged electrical equipment to be the cause of the outage.

Mayra Tostado, a PG&E spokesperson, explained that while PG&E’s electricians regularly inspect and maintain the substation’s equipment, momentary outages can sometimes occur.

“Substation outages are not as common as distribution outages,” she said. “There are more factors that can impact us being able to deliver service. … Momentary outages are typical — it could be any type of disruption (from) a bird that went on a piece of equipment and caused a momentary outage that was very brief or something else.”

Around 7:19 a.m., power was safely restored to over 800 customers after they were connected to an alternate power source. But nearly 20,000 customers had to wait several more hours before their power was restored.

Residents reported momentary outages that lasted only a few seconds late Wednesday night and several days before the Thursday morning’s outage. Tostado said these outages were determined to be caused by the same equipment that failed, resulting in Thursday’s outage. She said the cause of the failure is still under investigation.

Tostado said that PG&E’s distribution control center is responsible for receiving reports of outages. The team investigated after receiving multiple reports of the smaller, momentary outages but could not find the cause until Thursday morning’s power outage.

Many residents were vocal on social media about the recurring outages in the county.

“Outages – sometimes brief, sometimes not – are frequent in my neighborhood,” said Twitter user, MaryJane Perna. “Last week there were two (or three) times that I re-set all the clocks.”

“Problems at the substation have been happening for several days now – maybe as much as two weeks,” agreed Twitter user, Lanier Sammons.

By 12:15 p.m., repairs at the substation were complete and power was restored to over 19,500 customers, leaving approximately 1,500 still without power. PG&E expected a full restoration by the afternoon.

Tostado said some ways residents can best prepare for potential power outages include making sure they have necessary medications ready, extra flashlights and batteries and ensuring that cellphones and any other devices are charged and have a backup battery source.

She said freezing water bottles or other plastic containers and storing them in the freezer is a good way to be prepared and prevent food from spoiling from a power outage.

“One of the most important things to do, especially in Monterey County and for customers who live in high-risk fire areas is to make sure that their contact information is up-to-date on PGE.com,” Tostado said. “So whenever there is an outage, they’re getting notifications, they know what’s happening and they’re able to contact PG&E if they have any questions.”

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