Power restored after outage hits 11,000 PG&E customers in northwest San Francisco

Thousands of San Francisco residents in and around Golden Gate Park briefly lost electricity Sunday night after another Pacific Gas and Electric outage swept through the northwest side of the city, capping a holiday week marked by repeated weather related power failures.

According to PG&E’s online outage map, more than 11,000 customers in the Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and Presidio areas lost power at around 7:45 p.m. on Sunday. The utility reported that service had been fully restored by about 11 p.m.

PG&E said the latest outage was caused by an overhead equipment failure. The company did not provide more specific details in the information cited, such as the exact component that failed or the precise locations of any damaged infrastructure.

The Sunday night incident added to a string of power disruptions in San Francisco tied to a winter storm system that moved through the Bay Area over Christmas week, bringing heavy rain and strong winds. According to earlier reporting referenced in the article, the city experienced several outages during that period as the storm stressed the grid.

At the peak of the storm related outages, more than 130,000 PG&E customers were without power, the article noted, though it did not break down how many of those customers were in San Francisco specifically versus elsewhere in the Bay Area.

The weekend also saw another significant outage near Golden Gate Park. On Saturday, an earlier disruption affected about 6,000 customers in that area, according to PG&E. The article did not specify the exact hours of that outage or how long it took the utility to restore service.

The repeated interruptions highlight how vulnerable parts of PG&E’s urban infrastructure remain during winter weather, even in densely built areas of San Francisco that typically see less damage than more heavily forested or rural parts of the utility’s service territory. Customers in the Richmond, Golden Gate Park and Presidio neighborhoods experienced two notable outages in as many days, one tied directly to the winter storm and another linked to overhead equipment issues as identified by PG&E.

The report did not include information on whether any critical facilities, such as hospitals or transit infrastructure, were affected by the Sunday night outage, nor did it mention injuries, fires or other emergency incidents connected to the power loss. There was also no immediate indication of whether PG&E would conduct a formal review of the equipment failure that caused the latest disruption.

The article referenced other recent coverage noting that PG&E has been working to restore power to thousands of customers across the Bay Area in the wake of the Christmas week storm. Those reports described waves of light rain continuing in the region while crews addressed lingering outages, although specific locations outside San Francisco were not detailed in this story.

The Sunday night restoration timeline for the Richmond and Golden Gate Park areas suggested that the utility was able to return service relatively quickly compared with some of the longer storm related outages earlier in the week. From the initial reports at 7:45 p.m. to the all clear on the outage map by 11 p.m., affected residents in northwest San Francisco were without power for roughly three hours, based on the times cited.

The report did not say whether PG&E offered any estimates of when permanent repairs would be completed, or if temporary fixes were used to bring customers back online. There were no details on whether the company anticipated further outages in the same neighborhoods as winter weather continues.

For San Francisco residents, the repeated interruptions during and after the Christmas storm underscore the importance of monitoring PG&E’s outage map and alerts, particularly in wind and rain events that can affect aging overhead equipment. Households and businesses in the Richmond, Golden Gate Park and Presidio corridors have now experienced multiple outages in a short period, which may raise new questions about grid resilience in those neighborhoods.

The article did not include comment from city officials, local agencies or residents on the latest outage, and there was no mention of any formal complaints or investigations. At this point, the only stated cause for Sunday’s incident is PG&E’s description of an overhead equipment failure.

While power is back on for the more than 11,000 customers affected in northwest San Francisco on Sunday, the weeklong pattern of weather driven and equipment related outages suggests that reliability will remain a front burner concern for many Bay Area electricity customers as the winter storm season continues.