Roughly 4,400 San Diego Gas & Electric customers lost power Saturday night as four separate outages hit North County, East San Diego and La Mesa within hours of each other. The disruptions ranged from a few hundred customers near Twin Oaks and Hidden Meadows to nearly 3,000 in North Vista and West San Marcos, with crews scrambling across the county to restore service.
The largest single outage struck North Vista and West San Marcos, cutting power to around 2,974 customers starting at about 6:34 p.m., according to Fox 5 San Diego & KUSI News. SDG&E's website listed the cause as unknown and under investigation, with restoration expected around 11:30 p.m. A separate North County outage near Twin Oaks and Hidden Meadows began earlier, around 6:32 p.m., affecting about 762 customers. The outage was attributed to contact with the electrical system, and SDG&E projected power would return by around 9 p.m.
East San Diego and La Mesa Also Go Dark
East San Diego lost power around 4 p.m. Saturday, well before the North County outages began, affecting roughly 662 customers. SDG&E attributed that outage to something coming into contact with the electrical system, per the utility's website, and estimated restoration around 10 p.m. Crews were reportedly on the scene making repairs as of Saturday evening, the station's report notes.
In La Mesa, an outage near Lemon Avenue began around 5:23 p.m., ultimately leaving about 10 customers without power after affecting roughly 86 circuits, according to SDG&E's website. The cause was damaged equipment that crews were repairing, with restoration expected around 10 p.m. As of Saturday night, the story remained a developing one, per the original report.
A Grid Already Under Strain
Saturday's blackouts came just over a week after a heat wave pushed SDG&E's electricity demand to a record 5,209 megawatts on September 9, surpassing the utility's previous 2014 peak of 4,890 megawatts and triggering nearly 15,000 localized customer outages across the county, according to The Cool Down. It is unclear whether that earlier heat-driven demand spike contributed to equipment strain behind Saturday's separate outages, and the exact mechanical triggers for the North County and La Mesa incidents remain open questions.
The recurring disruptions land amid persistent scrutiny of SDG&E's reliability and rates. As of April 2026, the utility's bundled residential electricity rate averaged 46.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, making San Diego's rates roughly two and a half times the national average and the highest in the continental United States, per SolarAmerica. Wildfire mitigation and infrastructure cost recovery account for a substantial portion of those delivery charges.
Why Outages Keep Recurring Despite Reliability Averages
SDG&E's Electric System Reliability Annual Report, filed with state regulators in 2025, covers the utility's system reliability. Even so, multi-neighborhood blackouts like Saturday's have become a familiar pattern in San Diego County this year, echoing an August outage from Jamul to Pauma Valley that also left over 4,700 customers dark.
Part of the risk stems from geography: 64% of SDG&E's service area lies within high-fire threat districts, containing 3,364 miles of overhead electric lines and 1.5 million customer accounts, according to the utility's 2026-2028 Wildfire Mitigation Plan. The City of San Diego has responded with the state's largest municipal undergrounding program, which had converted more than 400 miles of utility lines underground by 2025 and managed 58 active conversion projects valued at $760 million, funded through a bill surcharge on ratepayers.
Reporting an Outage or a Downed Line
Most San Diego County customers now buy their electricity generation from Community Choice Aggregators such as San Diego Community Power and Clean Energy Alliance, but SDG&E remains solely responsible for maintaining physical delivery lines and responding to outages like Saturday's. Regional emergency officials, through Alert San Diego, instruct residents to check home breakers first and report line outages to 1-800-611-7343.
New state oversight could eventually make tracking nights like this one easier. In August, the California Public Utilities Commission issued Decision 26-08-007, establishing a streamlined and standardized outage reporting schema for major investor-owned utilities including SDG&E, aimed at modernizing how grid failures are logged and tracked by regulators and the public alike.
