SAN RAFAEL, Calif. (KRON) – It’s been years since we’ve seen anything like last night’s outages across the state, and we could see more Saturday and over the next few days as the Bay Area heat wave continues.

In San Rafael, more than 5,000 people had their power shut off Friday for several hours.

It wasn’t just in San Rafael.

Outages were reported in parts of Marin, Napa, and San Mateo counties, with the largest concentration of outages in San Mateo and the Foster City areas.

The reason is that it simply became too hot and the state’s power grids could not keep up with demands.

So the California Independent System Operator (ISO) declared a statewide Stage 3 emergency, which led to PG&E having to put in place rolling blackouts throughout the Bay Area and statewide.

In PG&E’s posted Saturday morning on Twitter, power has since been restored to impacted customers and crews continue to work to restore power to those without it this morning.

Between 5 and 10 pm Saturday, PG&E may conduct rotating power outages. The California ISO will announce this decision.

PG&E is encouraging people to conserve energy by following these tips:

• Adjust your thermostat to 78 degrees or higher or turn it off if you will be away from home. Use a fan instead of air conditioning when possible.
• Draw drapes and turn off unnecessary lighting.
• Keep refrigerator full (with bottles of water if nothing else) and unplug the second refrigerator.
• Avoid using electrical appliances and devices. Put off tasks like vacuuming, laundry, dish washing and computer time until after dinner (6 p.m.).
• Set your pool pump to run overnight instead of during the day.

Around 5 pm PG&E released this statement:

“PG&E says we must conserve energy over the next few days during this heatwave.” They won’t be releasing any more details on Saturday.

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