2,000 homes and businesses in Northern California go dark in PG&E first safety shutoff of year

Nearly 2,000 ratepayers of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. were in the dark Tuesday, cut off from the electricity grid after the utility implemented its first public safety power shutoff of the year amid hot, dry and windy conditions across Northern California ripe for possible wildfires. According to data provided by PG&E to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, the deliberate outages began just before 12:30 a.m. Tuesday. Shutoffs were ordered in eight of the 10 Northern California counties that PG&E said could be affected by the so-called PSPS outages....