Morning Power Outage Affected Customers and Commuters

If you noticed heavier traffic than usual on the streets of Mountain View Tuesday morning, a PG&E outage may have had something to do with it.

From 6 a.m. until 8:30 a.m., a total of 3,150 customers lost power in Mountain View, according to Pacific Gas & Electric spokeswoman Nicole Liebelt.

"We are still working to investigate the cause of that outage," she said. "It is certainly our goal to identify the cause."

In addition to the people at home who prepared to take on another workday, those already in their cars also experienced the inconvenience. Traffic lights at the intersections of Middlefield Road at both Shoreline and Moffett Boulevards were out.

Another possible contributor to the traffic, drivers trying to bypass an injury accident reported by KCBS at 6:51 a.m. on northbound US-101 just south of San Antonio.

According to Liebelt, PG&E had scheduled a planned outage that affected an isolated 21 customers because of routine maintenance on an electric line.

"We have to suspend service for the safety of our workers," she said and added that those customers had been alerted ahead of time. The power to those customers should be restored by early evening.

Lastly, one customer lost power at 10:49 a.m. because of a downed wire. A PG&E team arrived to assess the situation and a crew has started to make repairs, Liedelt explained. Estimated time of restoration for that customer is 6:30 p.m.

"All of these outages were unrelated," Liebelt said.