The big picture:

A wildfire shutoff targets a line, not a house. Southern California Edison (SCE) warns that a customer can stand in calm air and still lose power. The line feeding the block crosses “a windy, high fire risk area before reaching their address” [4]. So “one block or neighborhood may have power while others don’t” [4]. Crews then walk the route and check the poles before power returns.

I read the fleet count twice before the gap made sense. The California Energy Commission (CEC) counts 21,112 megawatts of battery storage, and most of it sits in big utility plants [3]. Nearly 16,000 megawatts come from 310 big sites here, and 2,000 more from plants in Nevada and Arizona [3]. Those systems move bulk power around the wider grid. They cannot push power into a local line the utility just opened.

What is left is small, and it is the only gear that keeps a fridge cold. It counts about 3,000 megawatts spread over more than 300,000 systems at homes, schools, farms and shops, and notes those units “can provide backup power during outages” [3]. The division puts about 14 percent of the fleet on your side of the meter, right where a shutoff lands.

Price explains the split. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) puts August’s household rate at 29.75 cents. The national average is 18.16, so local power costs 64 percent more [2]. Only Hawaii and Maine charge more [2].

A grid battery earns capacity payments and a set return, while a wall-mounted one earns only what its owner avoids paying, under a tariff the state’s regulator calls “usually lower than the retail rate” [5].

By the numbers

  • 88,000 — Homes put on notice: The 14 October list covered 29 counties, about 5,500 Medical Baseline customers and six Tribal governments, and PG&E opened more than 40 help centres across 23 counties [1].
  • 10,410 — Cut three days earlier: The utility cut 10,410 customers inside a 12,200-customer, 17-county zone, then warned that restored homes “could experience another outage” [6].
  • 29.75 cents — The household rate: The August figure ranks third-highest in the country and sits 64 percent above the 18.16-cent U.S. average [2].
  • 21,112 megawatts — The battery fleet: Nearly 16,000 megawatts sit in 310 big in-state plants and 2,000 more arrive from out of state, leaving about 3,000 in 300,000 small systems [3].

What I’d watch:

The gap between a notice and a dark house is where the money hides. A list is not an outage, and only a cut empties a freezer. I am watching the post-event reports for how many homes ran the full four days.

  • The household share: 3,000 of 21,112 megawatts is the sum that decides whether a shutoff is bearable on a normal street.
  • The missing credit: the federal clean energy credit stopped applying to spending after 31 December 2025. The install date controls it, so a 2026 job gets nothing even if the owner paid earlier [7].
  • The export rate: sales back to the grid usually fetch less than retail, which means a battery earns its keep mostly by running the house [5].
  • Medical Baseline homes: about 5,500 of them sat inside one week of notices, and those are the homes where four dark days become a health event [1].

The rest comes down to plain math. A bank sized against a year of bills instead of critical loads runs out first. Two houses on one line get different results from the same kit.

The catch

The honest check is that the state’s price eased even as its outage risk held firm. August’s 29.75 cents is 3.8 percent below the 30.92 cents of a year earlier, while the U.S. average rose 3.4 percent [2]. My reading is that the cost story here is thinner than the resilience story, and I could be wrong about how much of that dip lasts the winter.

Shutoffs also work. A line that stays live in a severe wind event can start a fire, and the utility taking public anger is the one that dodged the spark. What the record lacks is a household plan that treats the small battery as basic gear, not an optional extra.

The three levers stay separate. A retail rate, an export credit and an expired tax break are read side by side, never added up, and none of them offsets another.

At a glance

The shift: The state built 21,112 megawatts of batteries; about 85 percent sits on the grid’s side, where it cannot cover a shutoff. The number: 88,000 customers were in line for a four-day outage in October. The risk: The household share lost its federal credit in 2026, so the fix now costs full price.

Related reading

Sources

[1] Pacific Gas and Electric, “With Change Statewide Fire Weather Forecast, Planned PG&E Public Safety Power Shutoff Event Now Includes 88,000 Customers in Portions of Twenty-Nine Counties,” 2026-10-14 — https://investor.pgecorp.com/news-events/press-releases/press-release-details/2026/With-Change-Statewide-Fire-Weather-Forecast-Planned-PGE-Public-Safety-Power-Shutoff-Event-Now-Includes-88000-Customers-in-Portions-of-Twenty-Nine-Counties/default.aspx [2] U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, “Average Price of Electricity to Ultimate Customers by End-Use Sector, by State, August 2026 and 2025,” released 2026-10-23 — https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a [3] California Energy Commission, “California surpasses 21,000 megawatts of battery resources supporting the state’s electric grid,” 2026-08-07 — https://www.energy.ca.gov/news/2026-08/california-surpasses-21000-megawatts-battery-resources-supporting-states [4] Southern California Edison, “Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS)” — https://www.sce.com/outages-safety/outage-preparedness/outage-types/public-safety-power-shutoff-psps [5] California Public Utilities Commission, “Net Energy Metering and Net Billing” — https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-energy/demand-side-management/customer-generation/net-energy-metering-and-net-billing [6] Pacific Gas and Electric, “All customers impacted by the PSPS event have been restored,” 2026-10-12 — https://www.pge.com/en/newsroom/currents/safety/potential-public-safety-power-shutoff-could-impact-small-portion.html [7] Internal Revenue Service, “FAQs for modification of sections 25C, 25D, 25E, 30C, 30D, 45L, 45W, and 179D under Public Law 119-21,” — https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/faqs-for-modification-of-sections-25c-25d-25e-30c-30d-45l-45w-and-179d-under-public-law-119-21-139-stat-72-july-4-2025-commonly-known-as-the-one-big-beautiful-bill-obbb