On June 22, while helping snowbird friends pack up some of their belongings as they trek back to Minnesota for the summer, the power goes out. Not ideal given the weather during this time. But our friends told us about the Microgrid that was meant to help when power goes out. There was no transition whatsoever or jumping over to Imperial County like it was done before, as they mentioned.

How can people live through this, insanity?! Then we are told that this “usually happens,” and it takes a SDG&E tech to be dispatched, where they need to make their way over to help “turn it on.” Wait, what? Why is there no one here to do that, especially for an unplanned outage and during these sweltering temperatures?

Even though we were just visitors, this doesn’t seem right, whether it is over 100 degrees or in the 60’s. With a town with some folks who rely on power for medical reasons, this is concerning. We hope that something is done in order to fix this and SDG&E makes a change for this small town.

Judy Jansen

– Bloomington, Minnesota