Power Outages in Lodi, 2021–2026: An Update on Records and Causes
Power Outages in Lodi, 2021–2026: An Update on Records and Causes
LodiEye — September 2026
At a Glance
Lodi Electric Utility (LEU) serves about 28,000 accounts within roughly 14 square miles. Most outages on its system over the past five years were short and local, affecting a few dozen to a few hundred customers for an hour or two.
The two largest events came on back-to-back days in September 2022, and neither started on LEU's neighborhood lines. One was a load cut ordered in error by the regional power agency. The other was a failure of protective relays on one of the three transmission feeds that bring power into the city.
Weather-related outages in Lodi have come mostly from winter wind storms that push branches and debris into overhead lines. Summer heat has mattered mainly through the limits of the transmission lines that feed the city, not through failures of local equipment.
LEU does not publish an annual outage count or standard reliability measures, so a true year-by-year trend can't yet be drawn from public records. This update is built from the events documented in city filings, utility plans, city outage alerts, and news reports.
The Documented Outages
Customers affected in documented Lodi Electric outages, 2021–2026
Sources: City of Lodi CPUC filing (March 2026); Lodi News-Sentinel; ABC10; LEU outage alerts. The September 7, 2022 figure is the city's estimate that about 75 percent of LEU customers lost power at some point during the rotating outages; about 8,700 were out at the peak. The New Year's Eve 2022 storm is not shown because a customer count was not published. Small outages from 2025 and 2026 come from LEU's public alerts and are a sample, not a complete list.
| Date | Area | Customers | Duration | Cause |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 2021 | North Sacramento Road area | About 9,000 | About 2 hours | Wind; branches into lines |
| Oct 11, 2021 | Two neighborhoods south of downtown, bounded by Chestnut, Sacramento, Kettleman, Church, Tokay and Pleasant | 283 and 137 | Under 2 hours; about 40 minutes | Wind; branches into lines |
| Sept 6, 2022 | Park West, Lodi West, Harvest Crossing, Bridgetowne | 1,372 | About 45 minutes | Load cut ordered in error (NCPA and Cal ISO miscommunication) |
| Sept 7, 2022 | Citywide, rotating | About 8,700 at peak; about 75% of customers over the evening | Several hours; restored 10:30 p.m. | Primary and backup protective relays failed; Lockeford 60 kV feed out |
| Dec 31, 2022 | Scattered citywide | Thousands (count not published) | Lengthy in places | Atmospheric river; winds to 51 mph; trees down |
| Feb 4–5, 2024 | Scattered | 3,075 total | Up to nearly 3 hours | Wind; debris and limbs in lines at 7 locations |
| May 18, 2025 | Heritage and Guild area | 694 | About 70 minutes | Not stated |
| Feb 4, 2026 | Guild area | 87 | About 1 hour | Not stated |
| Feb 20, 2026 | Substation at Pine Street and Cherokee Lane | Nearly 8,000 | Most back in 35 minutes; all by 12:14 p.m. | Mylar balloons in overhead lines |
| Apr 7, 2026 | Reese and W. Elm Street area | 215 | About 1 hour 40 minutes | Not stated |
| Apr 15, 2026 | Blakely Park area | 51 | About 4.5 hours | Not stated |
What Caused Them
Wind and trees
This is the most common documented cause. In January 2021, branches that came down along North Sacramento Road cut power to about 9,000 customers for two hours. In October 2021, a wind advisory with gusts near 45 mph brought branches into lines in two neighborhoods south of downtown. The New Year's Eve 2022 atmospheric river brought winds up to 51 mph, flooded streets, and knocked over dozens of trees. In February 2024, LEU Director Jeff Berkheimer reported 3,075 customers out over a weekend storm, with crews responding to seven spots where debris or broken limbs were caught in overhead lines. All power was back before 6:30 the next morning.
These outages share a pattern: winter, wind, overhead lines, and trees. None has been traced to heat or summer demand.
The regional grid
On the afternoon of September 6, 2022, during the statewide heat emergency, a dispatcher at the Northern California Power Agency (NCPA), which supplies most of Lodi's power, understood an order from the California Independent System Operator (Cal ISO) as a request to cut 46 megawatts of load across several member cities. Lodi's share was about 5.6 megawatts. Power was shut off for about 45 minutes to 1,372 customers in Park West, Lodi West, Harvest Crossing and Bridgetowne. Cal ISO later said it had not ordered rotating outages that evening.
Equipment failure on a transmission feed
The next evening, September 7, 2022, brought the largest outage of the period. LEU receives power through three 60 kV lines from PG&E that connect at its Industrial Substation, formally the Fred M. Reid Industrial Substation near Lodi and Guild avenues. In the city's testimony to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the primary and backup protective relays on the Lockeford 60 kV feed both failed, forcing that line out of service. With only two feeds left, PG&E asked Lodi to cut 35 megawatts of load. LEU rotated one-hour outages through the city on a day that reached about 109 degrees.
About 8,700 customers were out at the peak, and the city estimates that about 75 percent of all LEU customers lost power at some point. PG&E cleared the city to restore full load at 10:30 p.m. The city's emergency notification, meant to go out around 4:20 p.m., overloaded its system and did not reach most residents.
Objects in the lines
On February 20, 2026, a cluster of mylar balloons became tangled in overhead lines at the substation at Pine Street and Cherokee Lane around 11:30 a.m. Nearly 8,000 customers lost power. Crews restored all but one circuit within 35 minutes, and everyone was back by 12:14 p.m. LEU specifies covers on overhead transformer and capacitor connections, in part to keep wildlife, foliage and balloons from making contact, but open substation lines remain exposed to this kind of event.
Small outages with no stated cause
Most outages in LEU's public alerts are small and list the cause as unknown at the time of the alert. The recent ones in the table ranged from 51 to 694 customers and from about an hour to four and a half hours. LEU's outage management system assigns a number to each outage, so cause information likely exists internally, but it is not part of the public alerts.
Aging Equipment
The clearest public record of LEU replacing old equipment is its removal of aged, small-diameter solid copper wire, known as #6 copper, from overhead primary lines. LEU replaced it with larger stranded wire with a steel core, which is less likely to break and fall. The utility reported the remaining amount in its annual plan filings.
Old #6 copper wire remaining on LEU overhead lines (feet)
Source: Lodi Electric Utility annual plan filings, 2023 and 2024.
The same filings count "wires down" events, when a primary or transmission wire falls to the ground or onto something else. The numbers are small: one in the year ending October 2020 (a failed connector), two the following year, none from November 2021 through June 2023, and one from July 2023 through April 2024. The filings also note two overhead transformer failures in 2021 and 2022, both traced to failed connection points on the transformer.
At the substation level, city budget documents from 2025 describe replacing older gas- and oil-filled circuit breakers at several substations, noting that worn parts had already been replaced during scheduled maintenance. The utility director's stated priorities include substation modernization and replacing failing distribution equipment before it fails.
The one large equipment failure in the period, the September 2022 relay failure, was on protection equipment for a transmission feed, not on neighborhood lines.
Heat and Load
Heat matters in Lodi mostly because the city's power has to come in over a limited number of transmission lines. PG&E's Lockeford–Lodi system can carry about 194 megawatts under normal conditions and about 152 megawatts if one line is lost. Cal ISO first flagged overloads and voltage problems on these lines more than a decade ago. In testimony to the CPUC, Berkheimer said the city's existing transmission feeds are operating near their limits and that Lodi expects to need 100 to 125 megawatts of additional capacity over the next 30 years.
That was the setting for September 2022. When one feed went out on a 109-degree day, the other two could not carry the city's load, and customers lost power even though LEU's own lines were intact.
Statewide conditions have eased since then. As of September 2026, Cal ISO had not issued a Flex Alert since 2022, which grid officials credit largely to the growth of battery storage.
What Has Changed Since 2022
Local emergency generation. In 2023 the state Department of Water Resources installed 48 megawatts of temporary natural gas generators next to the city's Surface Water Treatment Plant on Turner Road, west of Lodi Lake. The units are for grid emergencies only, are limited to about 300 hours a year, and have an initial term of about five years. Berkheimer said at the time that the plant would likely have avoided the rotating outages of September 2022. NCPA also operates a 27-megawatt peaking plant within LEU's territory.
A new transmission connection. On July 21, 2026, the CPUC approved PG&E's Northern San Joaquin 230 kV Transmission Project. PG&E will build about 10.6 miles of new line, expand its Lockeford Substation, and build a new switching station in Lodi. LEU will build the new Guild Substation between that switching station and its Industrial Substation. The project would roughly double the Lockeford–Lodi system's normal capacity, from about 194 to about 404 megawatts. Construction is expected to begin in 2028, with service planned for 2031.
Trees and lines. LEU tripled its tree-trimming budget between 2020 and 2022 and trimmed or removed about 1,700 trees near its lines between July 2023 and April 2024. Every tree near LEU lines is scheduled for a visit every 18 to 24 months.
What the Public Record Does Not Show
A few pieces of information would make a real trend possible. The first is annual reliability figures for LEU, such as the average number of outages per customer (known as SAIFI) and the average minutes without power per customer (SAIDI); these are the standard measures utilities report to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but no LEU figures were found in published sources. The second is the cause categories behind outages logged in LEU's outage management system, which would show whether small unexplained outages are mostly animals, equipment, vehicles, or vegetation. The third is a published LEU customer count for the New Year's Eve 2022 storm.
Until those are available, the documented record points to three things: most outages are small and short; the large ones have come from the transmission connection and the regional grid rather than local wear; and the main weather risk to LEU's own lines is winter wind, not summer heat.
About This Report
LodiEye is the original civic-reporting and analysis arm of Lodi411.com, a citizen-run civic data and transparency platform serving Lodi, California and San Joaquin County. LodiEye gathers information of public interest, applies editorial judgment to public records, meetings, and data, and publishes original explanatory reporting for its readers — the work of a newsroom, and a representative of the news media as that term is defined under federal law. Our reporting emphasizes primary sources, public data, and full source transparency so readers can check every claim. LodiEye complements, and does not replace, the other outlets covering this region; for additional reporting on Lodi, San Joaquin County, and the broader region, we also encourage readers to consult the Lodi News-Sentinel, Stocktonia, The Sacramento Bee, CalMatters, and other established news organizations. Our full editorial standards and news-media-status statement is published at lodi411.com/editorial-standards.
This LodiEye report was produced using artificial intelligence tools under the direction and review of the founder. Lodi411 uses multiple AI platforms in its research and publication workflow, including Anthropic's Claude (primarily Opus and Sonnet models) and Perplexity AI across a variety of large language models offered by each. These tools were used in the following capacities:
Source Discovery: AI-assisted search and retrieval identified the City of Lodi's March 2026 opening brief to the CPUC on the Northern San Joaquin 230 kV Transmission Project, Lodi Electric Utility's 2023 and 2024 plan filings with the state Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety, CPUC environmental review documents, the Department of Water Resources exemption notice for the Lodi emergency generators, LEU public outage alerts, and reporting by the Lodi News-Sentinel, ABC10 and GovTech.
Credibility Validation: Outage figures were checked across city statements, utility filings, and news reports. Where sources differed, as with customer counts for September 7, 2022, the report uses the city's own figures and notes the range.
Analysis and Synthesis: AI assisted in grouping documented outages by cause, compiling the utility's equipment and wires-down records into a single timeline, and relating the September 2022 events to the transmission capacity limits described in the CPUC record.
Presentation: Claude assisted in drafting and formatting the report, including the outage table and the Kendo UI charts of customers affected and conductor replacement.
Final Review: The editor sets the report's goals, scope, and tone; reviews and edits the report; checks figures against the linked sources; and makes all publication decisions.
Lodi411/LodiEye believes that transparency about how our research is produced — including our use of AI under human direction — strengthens trust with readers and the broader information ecosystem. Readers who spot an error are encouraged to write editor@lodi411.com so we can correct it.
Sources
- City of Lodi — Opening Brief, CPUC Application 23-09-001 (Northern San Joaquin 230 kV Transmission Project), March 20, 2026
- Lodi Electric Utility — Wildfire Mitigation Plan 2024 (wires-down counts, conductor replacement, underground share, tree work)
- Lodi Electric Utility — Wildfire Mitigation Plan 2023
- CPUC — Northern San Joaquin 230 kV Transmission Project environmental review
- Lodi News-Sentinel — Lodi transmission upgrade gets green light, Sept. 8, 2026
- ABC10 — Nearly 1,400 customers in Lodi lose power "in error" for an hour, Sept. 6, 2022
- ABC10 — Power restored after substation loss caused outage in Lodi, Sept. 7, 2022
- Lodi News-Sentinel — Construction begins on Lodi plant that will serve as backup energy source, May 10, 2023
- ABC10 — Future outages could be thwarted as new Lodi generator is built, May 2023
- California Department of Water Resources — Notice of Exemption, Strategic Reliability Reserve, City of Lodi Surface Water Treatment Facility Site
- Lodi News-Sentinel — Fierce winds whip Lodi, bring down trees and kick up dust, Oct. 12, 2021
- Lodi News-Sentinel — Atmospheric river on New Year's Eve causes flooding, downed trees and power outages, Jan. 4, 2023
- Lodi News-Sentinel — Lodi takes a lashing: Thousands lose power, but no major damage reported, Feb. 6, 2024
- Lodi News-Sentinel — Balloons behind Lodi power outage, Feb. 20, 2026
- City of Lodi — Special City Council meeting agenda, April 1, 2025 (substation breaker replacement)
- City of Lodi — Electric Utility
- LEU outage alerts as republished by PowerOutage.us (May 18, 2025; Feb. 4, Apr. 7 and Apr. 15, 2026)
- GovTech — How California Avoided Summer Blackouts Amid Record Heat, September 2026
- LodiEye — Power Outage Analysis for Lodi, California (2020–2025), August 2025