Sumeet Singh

Stories

PG&E puts a $22.5 billion price on San Francisco's grid; the city says $3.4 billion

Opposing the city takeover

PG&E told state regulators that a San Francisco takeover of its electric grid would cost $22.5 billion. Its Oct. 20 filing values the city assets at $13.9 billion and adds $8.6 billion in damages from cutting San Francisco's system away from the rest of the utility's network.

Updated Oct 21

San Francisco went dark—and the same substation has burned before

Built World

As of May 2026: Leading operational response and investigation coordination during outage

San Francisco is the kind of city that feels unstoppable—until the lights go out. On Saturday, a substation fire near 8th and Mission helped trigger a blackout that spread across neighborhoods and knocked out traffic signals. Restoration took more than two days and sparked political backlash and raised questions about whether a modern city can tolerate single-point failures in critical infrastructure.

Updated May 16