SCE customer unhappy about scheduled outage during triple digit heat

We’re in for a hot week here in the desert. That heat combined with scheduled power outages has some valley residents concerned.

David Manduca said he got a notice from Southern California Edison (SCE) about three scheduled outages planned for May 7, 10 and 11.

“It said that the electricity would be off from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the morning. And I thought 2 days was unreasonable and now it’s three days in the same week,” Manduca said.

When he called to complain, he wasn’t satisfied with the response.

“When I spoke to the man at Southern California Edison his response to me was ‘Well you knew what the weather was like when you moved to Palm Springs.'” Manduca said.

He said one of the representatives told him his electricity isn’t guaranteed.

“I think it’s just unreasonable of them, especially with the way the weather has been. And they don’t seem to care,” Manduca said.

Now he has to book a hotel room and make alternate plans for the other two days.

“Tomorrow I’m staying at a hotel, Thursday and Friday I’m going to go to Los Angeles to stay with a friend of mine. But there are other people who don’t have places to go and are renting hotel rooms, which is difficult for a lot of people,” Manduca said.

He said most of his neighbors are elderly.

“For them to be in a heated home overnight. And granted it’s not 100 degrees at night right now, but still. It gets to 90 degrees inside at night,” Manduca said.

He said he wishes they would schedule their repairs at a time when it’s not so hot.

“I think they could spread them out. They could postpone it to a cooler month of the year. I don’t know what is so urgent,” Manduca said.

He said he’s hoping someone steps up and reschedules this week’s outage.

After reaching out to SCE, a representative from the company provided this information:

SCE has scheduled two maintenance outages in Palm Springs this week. They are set for Monday, May 7, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., and Thursday, May 10, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. About 208 customers will be impacted each night.

“An underground vault is being replaced to improve infrastructure and enhance reliability. The planned work is intensive but we’re trying to minimize impact to customers as much as possible, including by scheduling the work at night,” SCE representative Sally Jeun wrote. “Our crews will work hard to complete the maintenance work and restore service to customers as quickly and safely as possible. There are instances where SCE will cancel maintenance outages due to extreme weather, but will continue with some maintenance outages like the one in Palm Springs that are necessary to protect public safety and prevent potentially longer, more dangerous emergency outages. We understand the inconvenience for our customers when the power is out in this kind of hot weather and we appreciate their patience while we make these repairs so they can have more reliable power in the future.”

For more information on the outages, click here.