PSPS shutoffs: how to get your home ready
Jenny White · 2026-04-08 · 3 min read
If you live in Auburn, Meadow Vista, Grass Valley, Placerville or anywhere else up the hill, you know the routine. A red flag warning goes up, a shutoff is announced, and the house goes quiet for a day or three. Getting ready is an electrical project, not a trip to the hardware store at 9 pm the night before. Here is how the three options compare.
What is a Public Safety Power Shutoff?
During hot, dry and windy weather, California utilities can cut power to lines in high fire-threat areas so their equipment does not start a fire. The California Public Utilities Commission sets the rules, and the utility notifies customers ahead of time when it can. Foothill circuits tend to be shut off more often than valley ones, and restoring power waits until crews have inspected the lines.
Is a portable generator with an inlet and interlock enough?
For short outages and a tight budget, yes. A portable generator on the driveway plugs into an inlet box on the outside of the house, and an interlock kit at the panel makes it physically impossible to have the generator and the utility connected at the same time. You choose which breakers to run. Someone has to be home to start it, fuel it and shut it down, and it needs a permit.
What it is not: a cord from the generator into a wall outlet. That sends power back up the utility lines, where it can hurt a lineworker restoring service, and it is illegal. An inlet and interlock is the safe version (NEC Article 702), and it is usually a one-visit job.
When does a standby generator make sense?
A standby generator lives on a pad, runs on natural gas or propane, starts itself within seconds of an outage and shuts off when power returns. An automatic transfer switch moves the house from utility to generator and back without backfeeding the grid. Whole-home units run the air conditioning; smaller units run essential circuits on a backup subpanel. It needs a permit, a gas line and a yearly service, and in return you mostly stop noticing shutoffs.
What about a home battery?
Silent, no fuel, no oil changes. A battery charges from the grid or from solar and covers the essentials through a typical shutoff; with solar it can recharge every sunny day of a long one. Size and cost depend on how much you want to back up and for how long. A battery also needs an interconnection application with your utility, which reviews and approves it on its own timeline; we submit it for you.
Which backup option is right for your house?
Outages of a few hours and a tight budget: inlet and interlock with a portable generator.
Multi-day outages, a well pump, medical equipment or a home office: standby generator, or a battery with solar.
Existing solar: a battery is usually the best fit, because the panels recharge it every day of the shutoff.
No gas service and no solar: a larger battery, or a propane standby generator.
What is an outage-ready check?
Before fire season we test the transfer switch or interlock, exercise the generator, check the battery's backup settings and confirm the circuits you care about are actually on the backup side. Homeowners are regularly surprised to learn the fridge is on the wrong subpanel. Better to find that in April than at 2 am in October.
Generators and batteries need a permit and an inspection. We pull the permit, submit the battery interconnection application and coordinate the gas contractor for generators. Each fee is its own line on the quote.
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