The hourslong outage affected nearly a third of the city and forced the closure of transit stations. Service was restored for many customers late Saturday.
Published Dec. 20, 2025Updated Dec. 21, 2025, 1:41 a.m. ET
Power was restored for tens of thousands of electricity customers in San Francisco late Saturday, after an hourslong outage affecting nearly a third of the city left many neighborhoods in darkness by nightfall.
About 40,000 of the city’s 414,000 customers were without power as of about 9:30 p.m., down from about 124,000 earlier on Saturday evening, according to the site PowerOutage.com. Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility serving the city, said on social media that it expected to restore the remaining outages overnight.
When night fell, the outage was affecting many neighborhoods in the northern half of the city, including the Richmond and Sunset districts, and stretching through Haight Ashbury into downtown. Much of the west side near Golden Gate Park and north toward the Presidio were dark. So was City Hall’s dome. Pedestrians used their phone flashlights to cross streets as some restaurants served meals by candlelight.
The outage forced stores and mass-transit stations to close, and led Waymo to temporarily suspend its driverless taxi services. The San Francisco Ballet canceled a performance of “The Nutcracker.”
The cause of the outage was not immediately clear. A fire at a five-story Pacific Gas & Electric substation in the South Market neighborhood on Saturday was a contributing factor, said Lt. Mariano Elías, a spokesman for the San Francisco Fire Department.
Power had been out in parts of the city before the fire started on Saturday afternoon, according to a map of outages maintained by Pacific Gas & Electric. The number of outages expanded by tens of thousands of customers around the same time as the fire. But Lieutenant Elías said he could not say whether the fire was the sole cause.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.