PG&E crews responded to a transformer fire in the Mission District that cut electricity to an estimated 11,000 residential and commercial customers. The utility company reported the blaze began late Sunday evening and dispatched emergency teams to secure the site, assess equipment damage and reroute supply through adjacent substations. No injuries were reported, but several businesses remained closed during peak evening hours as technicians worked under tight safety protocols.

Earlier this year, a separate PG&E-operated substation outage in San Francisco prompted the temporary suspension of various electric-dependent operations, including a municipal transit pilot program. The fault, traced to equipment aging and unanticipated load fluctuations during a heatwave, led PG&E to issue a citywide advisory and initiate a fleet-wide software update for affected clients. Restoration took over 12 hours, highlighting vulnerabilities in the system’s resilience to sudden demand spikes.

PG&E has committed to investing $1.8 billion in its San Francisco distribution network over the next three years to replace aging transformers and upgrade protective relays. Planned projects include installing remote monitoring devices at 15 substations to detect faults in real time and deploying mobile generator units for faster emergency response. The utility aims to boost reliability metrics by 20% and reduce outage durations by an average of 30 minutes per event.