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Three times in the last two weeks, hours-long power outages blacked out large sections of downtown Berkeley, angering merchants and raising concerns among city officials. Almost a thousand downtown electricity customers lost power twice in separate incidents over the course of two days. 

“All three times, we had to close,” said Edward Holman, a partner in Eudemonia, the game store/gaming space/cybercafe at 2154 University Ave. Eudemonia customers can engage in online gaming through the store’s two dozen state-of-the-art gaming computers, “and since we had a lot of computers up and running each time, the outages were rather hard on us.” 

City Energy Officer Neal De Snoo said he’s been in regular contact with Pacific Gas & Electric, which maintains the city’s electrical system. “We’re looking into it,” he said, “and in the past, PG&E has been responsive to putting in long-term fixes.” 

When a series of outages hit the downtown and Telegraph Avenue business district in winter 1997-98, “we undertook a meeting of business people and PG&E representatives. They undertook an improvement program and put in long-term fixes.” 

A study of those earlier failures placed the blame on a number of causes. 

“We’re talking to PG&E, and they’re telling us that underground cables have been shorting out. We may be holding another meeting with them and with business people,” De Snoo said. 

Brian Swanson, a spokesman for the utility, said PG&E representatives will meet with Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington and business owners Thursday at Worthington’s request to discuss electrical service reliability. 

The first outage on March 8 was the smallest, interrupting service to 381 customers near the intersection of University Avenue and Milvia Street between 3:29 and 5:42 p.m. Swanson blamed the outage on a tree. 

The second outage came six days later and was caused by a transformer failure. The outage began at 6:52 p.m. and lasted until 8:12 p.m., cutting service to 964 customers from Martin Luther King Jr. Way east to Fulton Street between Cedar Street and Bancroft Way. Crews restored power by linking customers to another circuit. 

The third and most severe outage followed at 3:37 on the afternoon of March 16, after an underground lead cable failed because of a combination of age, the extra burden caused by the linkage to customers in the earlier outage, and heavy use caused by unseasonably high temperatures. 

The March 16 failure blacked out service to the same 964 customers who had lost power on March 14, plus an additional 2,825 in two areas—the first from Addison Street south to Allston Way between Milvia Street and Shattuck Avenue and the second from Bancroft Way south to Stuart Street between Telegraph Avenue and Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve. 

Service was restored to 2,825 customers at 5:24, and to the remaining 964 at 11:38 p.m. 

The utility is in the midst of a long-term project to replace all the antiquated lead cable, PG&E’s Swanson said. 

Asked about the impact of the electricity failures on local merchants, Downtown Berkeley Association Executive Director Deborah Badhia said she wasn’t sure how to respond. 

“On the one hand, it’s good to let people known that we’ve been having problems with the electrical system, but on the other hand, business owners are worried that reports might discourage customers from coming.” 

Businesses which suffered losses because of the outage are eligible for damages from the utility, said Badhia. For information, see the utility’s website at www.pge.com and click on “claims.”