LAKE COUNTY — When Pacific Gas & Electric Co. shut its electric grid off last October from thousands of Lake County residents, Clearlake restaurant The Spot lost power.
The lakeside diner was able to stay open then, The Spot manager Lacilia Botello said Monday. “We had some high sales” that day, she noted.
But her story, like those of many other Lake County businesses, could be different this year if PG&E’s warning of up-to five day shutoffs becomes a reality.
Botello said that without backup power—which she called an impossibility at the restaurant due to space, price and safety limitations—The Spot could be put out about $3,000 each day in sales alone, with up to $15,000 in potential inventory losses, mostly in perishable food items.
“You can’t control the weather,” Botello said, referring to PG&E’s plan to shut power down during windy, dry weather events that create an elevated risk of wildfire. But “if you shut the power off to all these consumers, it’s going to affect the businesses as well in all of these communities.”
In Lucerne, Lakeview Market owner Kenny Parlet, who is also a city council member in Lakeport, plans to keep his grocery open, but his investment in backup power will likely be high—about $20,000 all told to rent a refrigerator trailer that could keep his perishables viable.
“We’re gonna be here through thick and thin just like we were during the fire,” Parlet said. But repeated, extended power shutoffs “could be the end for us” without mitigation, he added.
Parlet said his store lost about $30,000 in business during the Ranch Fire in 2018, but he was able to keep his perishables cold because the power was only out for 11 hours.
Parlet warned that despite what he called “terrorist” public information disbursement from local governments about the potential severity of the planned shutoffs, he believes many people will have forgotten about the shutoffs before they actually come to pass.
“It’s going to be like the boy who cried wolf,” Parlet said, arguing that the most likely time for a shutoff will be October and November.
In Clearlake, J&L Market manager Kumar Joshi said the store is not as prepared as it would like to be for a shutoff.
“I’m not prepared yet,” Joshi said, “but I want to prepare. But I don’t like that PG&E does this kind of stuff,” he added.
The store, which sells bait to fishermen as well as beer, wine, food and snacks, plans to operate on a limited basis in the event of a shutoff, closing at dusk each day: the one small generator Joshi said the company was able to purchase for about $4,000 is just enough to power some of the smaller appliances.
The frozen food and ice cream J&L sells a lot of in the summer will likely go bad during an extended shutoff, as their refrigerators can’t be powered with the small generator alone, said Joshi.
“If stuff goes bad,” he said, the store would take a hit. “The customers, they’ll come back. But we’ll lose a lot of (inventory).” Joshi knew of no way to recoup those losses, noting that PG&E was not planning on giving reimbursements for shutting down the power.
“It would be a good thing,” Joshi said of the prospect of getting money to pay for J&L’s losses. “But I don’t think so.”
So far, the J&L’s attempts to find a generator to meet all of their electrical demands has been unsuccessful. The type of generator they need would cost about $15,000, he said. While that price tag is daunting, it’s not what’s keeping J&L from making the purchase.
“Nobody has time to make it out,” Joshi said of the local generator suppliers he’s contacted. “They are too busy” with other generator orders, he noted.
It’s been harder for many businesses like J&L to find an available generator than to find the money to pay for it.
Although car dealership Matt Mazzei Chevrolet in Lakeport can afford the roughly $60,000 price tag for the outsized generator it would take to power the business, said general manager Mark Stone, the wait is too long to make sense this summer.
“It’s 10 to 12 weeks out,” Stone said of the generator. Because of the wait, Stone said he plans to hold off on even trying to make a purchase until this fall.
“We plan on being open” even without the generator, he noted.
Stone said, however, that despite the inconvenience to his business, he can appreciate the shutoffs as a safety measure.
“No one’s going to win on either side of this argument,” he said. People “don’t want to be closed,” he noted, but said that given the toll fires have taken in Lake County already, “you want to err on the side of concern.”
Lakeport Tire & Auto co-owner Toni Funderburg has also faced obstacles to getting backup power installed for her business. She said she had to travel near Portland, Oregon to find a generator to power the three car lifts, air compressors and other tools needed to run her Main Street mechanic shop.
“It was up one day and down the next,” Funderburg said. The 42 kilowatt generator cost about $12,000, she noted, not including the electrical installation work that she’s still waiting to complete.
A PSPS, Funderburg said, would be “a challenge to our bottom line.” Asked whether she thought the costs outweighed the benefits of powering down PG&E’s grid when it is most at risk of starting a fire, Funderburg replied honestly, “I don’t know.” She added that the prospect of shutoffs “has a negative effect on the community.”
Funderburg said she’s most anxious about those who need electrically-powered medical equipment to survive.
“I have a relative that’s on oxygen and we had to get her a permanent generator,” Funderburg added. The unit cost almost $9,000. “There’s a lot of people that can’t afford that,” she said.
“It’s nothing we ever dreamed we were going to have to do.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that PG&E did not proactively shut off power twice to some Lake County residents in October and November 2018, but once only, in October.
