When Substations Catch Fire

PG&E Corp. (PCG) had a rough Saturday after a fire broke out at its substation located at 8th and Mission in San Francisco, leaving more than 130,000 customers without electricity. This is the kind of infrastructure failure that ripples through an entire city faster than you can say "where's my flashlight?"

The outage didn't start at full catastrophe level. Initially, PG&E's Outage Center reported about 24,842 customers affected. Then the number jumped to 39,520 homes across Richmond, Sunset, Presidio, Golden Gate Park, and parts of downtown. By 4:30 p.m., the situation had ballooned to 130,000 customers sitting in the dark. That's the kind of escalation that makes utility executives very nervous.

The California-based energy holding company posted on X that it was coordinating with first responders and city officials to tackle the problem. Because when your substation catches fire in the middle of a major metropolitan area, you need all hands on deck.

City Grinds to a Partial Halt

The cascading effects were predictably messy. BART shut down both Civic Center and Van Ness stations. Muni trains stopped running underground, forcing thousands of commuters to find alternative routes. Traffic signals went dark at major intersections, turning San Francisco's already chaotic streets into an even more interesting driving experience.

Even the robots had to sit this one out. Waymo, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) (GOOGL), told NBC Bay Area on Saturday evening that it was temporarily suspending service in the city because of the power outage. Turns out self-driving cars still need functioning infrastructure.

In other PG&E news this week, the company announced organizational changes on Wednesday, naming Sumeet Singh as the new CEO of Pacific Gas and Electric Company effective January 1, 2026. He'll have plenty of substation fires to worry about, apparently.

Stock Performance

For investors keeping an eye on PG&E (PCG), the stock currently shows a Relative Strength Index of 52.63, suggesting neither overbought nor oversold conditions. The company carries a market capitalization of $34.57 billion, with shares trading between a 52-week high of $20.44 and a low of $12.97. According to market analytics, PCG scores 80.98 on value metrics, indicating the stock may be reasonably priced relative to its fundamentals.