SCE crew working on a power line (Photo – Edison)
Southern California Edison (SCE) will begin significant electrical grid maintenance in South Pasadena as part of its long-term initiative to modernize the energy grid and reduce wildfire risk. The upgrades are scheduled to take place from October 14, 2025, through January 30, 2026, primarily affecting the Southwest Monterey Hills area.
By News Desk
During this period, residents can expect to see SCE crews and approved contractors working in the neighborhood. The project will involve the use of heavy equipment and helicopters to install upgraded components, and will require temporary road closures and encroachments.
SCE has announced that planned power outages will be necessary to complete the work. Affected households will be notified in advance of any service interruptions.
The utility company emphasizes that these upgrades are essential for improving grid reliability and enhancing public safety during wildfire season.
This news is late… first, I appreciate that the electrical updates are being done. That said, we’ve had at least 5 days of 12+ hour power outage in the last 6-8 weeks. In almost every case SCE indicated an outage from 8am-5pm and it went many hours late, sometimes up to 10pm or even 2am. I and my neighbors lost food from freezers, and had heat waves with no air conditioning all day. I am signed up for notifications and I only received some of them. The real story here should be the poor SCE management of the planning/scheduling. Every time the work went hours later than planned, and they did not learn to update their expected outage window from 8am-10pm instead of 8am-5pm. Perhaps there is a CPUC regulation that doesn’t allow longer scheduled outages because people’s food will spoil? During heat waves, they could have worked in the night to avoid impacting people losing their air conditioning and avoid impact to preparing meals. I’m not calling out the loss of power during the day for working from home, because at least during daytime we can go to a library or cafe for Internet access and at night there would be no alternatives. It seems to me that impacts of this magnitude should be planned with input from the affected customers so as to minimize impact, and communications should be honest about expected impact times.