Two recent fires at PG&E substations cut power to thousands, drew condemnation from members of Congress, and spotlighted a year full of safety and maintenance violations at the utility giant’s substations throughout the region, from oil leaks to broken cooling fans and birds’ nests in equipment.
A substation fire Dec. 20 in San Francisco knocked out power to more than 100,000 customers — some for more than two days — paralyzed many Waymo robotaxis, and elicited a promise from the utility’s new CEO to provide $50 million in compensation to those affected.
On Dec. 24, flames erupted at a PG&E substation in Saratoga, leading to a power outage affecting 16,500 customers.
Oakland-headquartered PG&E said this week that both incidents were under investigation.
Substations take in high-voltage electricity from transmission lines and reduce it to a lower voltage that can be safely carried by distribution lines to homes and businesses.
State audits in 2025 of PG&E substations in the Bay Area that found problems including missing fire extinguishers, oil leaks, non-functional cooling fans, loose wires, holes where bolts should be, and birds nesting in electrical equipment.
“PG&E has underinvested in safety,” South Bay Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna said after looking at audit results. “This just confirms that we need to make PG&E a California customer-owned utility, not investor owned.”
The utility said in a statement this week that it is “committed to adhering to compliance standards, taking immediate corrective actions when issues arise, and operating in a manner that prioritizes public and coworker safety.”
The California Public Utilities Commission typically audits each of PG&E’s five regions — the North Coast, Sierra, Bay Area, Central Coast, and Central Valley — every five years.
During audits of PG&E substations in January and May of 2025 by California’s utility regulator, inspectors found oil leaks in San Jose, Gilroy, Saratoga, Cupertino and Redwood City; bolts missing from the base of a transmission tower in Belmont and from a circuit-breaker structure in San Carlos; a contraption in Half Moon Bay for refilling leaking equipment, involving a 55-gallon drum with four large rocks on top of it and a tube running up into a bank of electrical transformers; and a total of seven cooling fans not working in San Jose, and six non-operational in Cupertino.
Battery corrosion was found at substations in Santa Clara, Cupertino, Morgan Hill, Millbrae and San Francisco. Fire extinguishers were missing from one of the utility’s San Francisco substations.
Inspectors identified damaged equipment gauges at a substation in Redwood City, unreadable gauges in San Jose, broken gauges at two substations in San Francisco, and a missing temperature gauge in Menlo Park. A non-functional temperature gauge at the Redwood City substation had “loose wires coming out of it,” the audit report said.
The January audit at the Saratoga substation where the Dec. 24 fire occurred revealed a branch inside a radiator. The May audit of the San Francisco substation where the Dec. 20 fire occurred found weeping oil on a radiator, a failed alarm relay, and a broken nitrogen gauge along with an alarm showing low nitrogen pressure.
PG&E said it “performs regular inspections and preventative maintenance on its substation assets consistent with good utility practice.”
But Mark Toney, executive director of watchdog group The Utility Reform Network (TURN), said PG&E’s customers “expect PG&E to walk the talk” on safety, and added, “that’s what we’re paying the bills for.”
The most recent audits for PG&E’s East Bay substations, from 2024, showed fewer violations than in the South Bay, Peninsula and San Francisco in 2025. Inspectors noted an oil leak, birds’ nests and a broken insulator in Pleasanton, and in Newark, found a rusted anchor for a tower-support cable, along with illegible gauges and birds’ nests. It was unclear why the East Bay appeared to fare better.
PG&E said it takes “immediate action to address audit findings with a priority on any issue that could potentially pose a safety, ignition, or significant reliability risk.”
State audits have flagged similar issues at other utilities, though regulators have not said whether PG&E’s violations are more widespread.
The California Public Utilities Commission, which conducted the audits, said it can use investigations and fines to ensure laws and rules are followed. The commission’s citations report shows PG&E has been hit with millions of fines over wildfires, but no apparent penalties related to substation maintenance issues.
PG&E, which serves 16 million customers from Eureka to Bakersfield and made a record profit of $2.47 billion last year, has faced accusations for years that it prioritizes paying billions of dollars to shareholders over safety. In 2020, the utility pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter after a transmission-line failure caused the deadly 2018 Camp Fire that razed Paradise in Butte County. The previous year, Judge William Alsup of U.S. District Court in San Francisco assailed the utility’s failure to stop its equipment from sparking wildfires, saying, “PG&E pumped out $4.5 billion in dividends and let the tree budget wither.”
In the wake of forest fires caused by its equipment, PG&E has scrambled to prevent further damage and tragedies. The utility says it has buried 1,000 miles of power lines in high fire-risk areas, boosted vegetation maintenance and strengthened power poles and lines. It has funded the work by raising customers’ rates by $9.8 billion from 2019 to 2023, the California Public Utilities Commission reported.
That spending has helped double PG&E residential customers’ rates over the past decade, and Californians pay the second-highest electricity rates in the country, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Critics say the focus on wildfire prevention may come at a cost elsewhere, with TURN’s Toney worrying that PG&E is “not paying the same level of attention to other safety issues and other maintenance issues.”
East Bay Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell called the lengthy blackout from the San Francisco PG&E substation fire “a public safety risk” and demanded PG&E “facilitate a reimbursement process where families who lost groceries and small businesses who lost profits can be made whole.” The day Swalwell made his statement, PG&E’s incoming CEO Sumeet Singh said the utility had set aside $50 million to give automatic credits of $200 for residential customers affected by the blackout and “approximately $2,500” for affected businesses.
“Who’s going to pay?” Toney said. “Are ratepayers going to have to pay for it? It doesn’t seem fair.”
PG&E, where previous CEO Patricia Poppe received $15.8 million in compensation last year, declined to say whether customers would end up paying for the $50 million response to the San Francisco blackout. [Have we asked explicitly whether shareholders, insurance or ratepayers will absorb the cost? If we can get that answer, it would sharpen the ending. I just asked who was gonna pay for it, so I think we have to leave it]
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