PG&E Focused on Essential Safety and Wildfire Mitigation Projects as COVID-19 Pandemic Continues - Seite 2

Projects outside of system safety and wildfire mitigation work are being reviewed to determine whether they fit PG&E’s definition of critical and essential work and to understand how the work will impact customers.

First, the projects are reviewed to determine whether a portion of or all of the work can be safely performed energized. If working via energized methods is not possible, methods to reduce the impact of the planned outages are evaluated, including potentially reducing the duration of the planned outages, performing some of this work during night-time hours or installing temporary generation, which limits the outage duration to the time needed to transfer customers between the PG&E source and the temporary generation at the start and end of the job.

Defining Essential Gas Work

PG&E’s Gas Operations likewise will continue conducting essential work to support its ongoing commitment to safely and reliably deliver natural gas to customers. Some examples include:

• Emergency response to restore gas service;
• Service restoration and relights;
• Regulatory code compliance work including safety surveys and patrols of gas pipelines, maintenance essential to the safe operation of the system, and fulfilling 811 requests to locate and mark PG&E infrastructure;
• New customer connections and Work Requested by Others (WRO); and
• Butte County Rebuild work.

‘Upholding Our Crucial Mission’

This work, at such an uncertain time, remains vital to customers and communities.

“Our job at PG&E remains the same – to be there for our customers and to uphold our crucial mission of providing reliable gas and electric service while also keeping our customers and our employees safe,” said Andy Vesey, PG&E Utility CEO and President.

“Given the extraordinary COVID-19 situation, safe, consistent gas and electric service are more important today than ever before. Our crews remain in the field keeping our gas and electric service functioning safely and smoothly, along with all restoration and emergency work. We will adjust our service priorities and work as needed to meet this commitment,” he added.

Those adjustments include how PG&E has changed some of its work protocols to help safeguard the health and safety of our workers and the general public, as well as to provide continuity of service during this critical time. PG&E employees have been given guidance on maintaining social distance and wearing protective equipment.