PG&E changing rotating outage blocks?

[mblakele]

My latest PG&E statement shows a new rotating outage block, changing from 50 to 13B. That seems reasonable enough, because as I understand it over half of PG&E customers were on block 50 and thus exempt from most outages. That never made much sense to me.

But I'm curious about this change, and I haven't been able to find details on pge.com or using other online sources. Does anyone know how and why these changes are being made?

 

[Merrill]

We are on 50 and still had flex alerts with power outages.

 

[Janus]

After the Camp Fire, PG&E talked about improving their ability to selective shutdown parts of the gird. Presumably you live near some sort of essential thing (fire station, hospital, etc); and they finally installed a remotely controllable switch which allows them to turn off your power, without also turning off the essential place's power.

 

[mblakele]

After the Camp Fire, PG&E talked about improving their ability to selective shutdown parts of the gird. Presumably you live near some sort of essential thing (fire station, hospital, etc); and they finally installed a remotely controllable switch which allows them to turn off your power, without also turning off the essential place's power.

As I understand it, acting on a remote disconnect command is basic functionality for smart meters (source, source). That's handy for the utility if you don't pay your bill, and supposed to be good for rolling outages too.

But I was hoping to find a PG&E or PUC document describing rollout of this (new?) shift away from leaving over half of PG&E customers on block 50.