Incident Investigations for Electric Facilities

Electric utilities must report electric incidents (accidents involving electric facilities), which meet any of the criteria below:

• Result in fatality or personal injury that requires medical attention from a healthcare professional at a hospital or other medical facility and are attributable or allegedly attributable to utility-owned facilities; or
• Are the subject of media coverage and are attributable or allegedly attributable to the utility electrical facilities (media as used in this context refers to any of the major news outlets and publications (i.e. a minimum daily circulation of 25,000 or minimum daily followers of 25,000) in the area, city and/or county where the incident occurred); or
• Involve damage (caused by a utility facility) to property estimated to equal or exceed $200,000. Property in this section refers to any utility-owned and/or non-utility owned property and facilities. In calculating the amount of damages, the utility shall estimate the cost to replace any damaged facilities that belong to the utility or properties of a non-utility entity. The cost does not include the labor involved to replace the damaged facilities and should be broken down to show the cost of damages to the utility’s facilities and non-utility properties; or
• Prompted a government entity to investigate whether the infrastructure owned or operated by the utility caused a wildfire.

In general, the electric utility must report these types of incidents to the CPUC within two (2) hours of their occurrence. ESRB investigates these incidents to enforce the CPUC’s rules and regulations and to determine how we can limit the occurrences of such incidents in the future. ESRB produces an investigative report for each incident reported and investigated.

To request a copy of a report, please contact our Legal Division with a specific and focused request so that the records can be identified, located and retrieved by our staff:

CPUC Legal Division Public Records Office

505 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102

Fax: (415) 703-2262

Phone: 415-703-1366

public.records@cpuc.ca.gov

For more details about the reporting requirements, please see the excerpt from Resolution ESRB-12.

Historical Incident Statistics

Note: The data below was collected from our database through December 2023.

Total Number of Reported Incidents

The table below shows the total number of reported incidents by each utility per year.

Total Number of Fatalities and Injuries per Utility

The table below shows the number of fatalities and injuries that resulted from reported incidents for each utility.

Total Number of Utility Incidents by Cause

The table below shows the total number of reported incidents sorted by cause for each utility.