Losing power can be a big hassle, and some residents in Goleta say they experienced repeated outages in 2023, one lasting 29 hours.
On December 17, more than 350 Southern California Edison (SCE) customers in Goleta experienced a power outage lasting 29 hours.
Eric Gordon, who lives in the University Village neighborhood, says they typically lose power once a year and not normally for very long. Last year, the neighborhood was impacted by two outages. The first was a much shorter, weather-related outage in March.
"This last one which was 29 hours, the only way I knew the power went out is the uninterruptable power supply started beeping. I went online to check and it said nothing, there shouldn’t be an outage," Gordon said.
Gordon, who signed up for SCE text alerts, says it took hours for the website to show an outage in the area, and 12 hours to receive a text from SCE alerting him to the outage.
"I want to know three things — what happened, what you are doing to fix it, and an estimate of when to expect power back. That allows me and other residents to plan," he said.
As for the new $55 million GridStor battery storage facility in Goleta, resident Johanna Chase wants to know why her neighborhood didn’t receive backup power from the facility during the outage.
"The GridStor facility was designed to provide that level of power and didn’t. What's the purpose of the GridStor if it wasn’t being utilized to support us when we had to go 29 hours without power?" she said.
In response, GridStor said in a statement, "Our facility does not address outages arising from local distribution wires being disrupted or powered down for safety. The local utility is responsible for all decisions regarding outage response and safety."
According to SCE, the December outage was caused by equipment failure and is currently being addressed.
If you are in the neighborhood, you’ll find exposed high-voltage wires coming out of the sidewalk. SCE representative Gabriela Ornelas says this is part of underground equipment fixes and upgrades for the area.
"Specifically, in this instance, these lines run through the residential properties in the neighborhood. Our crews will be working with each property to fix the lines there," Ornelas said.
When future outages occur, SCE says the best option to stay informed is by using the company’s interactive outage map found at SCE.com.
