Who's Running Your Property — You, or the Utility?
You knew it was coming. You got the notification — 48 hours' notice, maybe less. Now you're running through the checklist: fill the bathtub, charge the phones, move what you can to the cooler, figure out the generator situation. Again 😓.
Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) have become a fact of life in rural California. But "fact of life" doesn't mean “you can’t do anything about it." Properties that weather PSPS events with minimal disruption don’t wait for the grid to come back because they’ve built energy resilience.
This article explores what PSPS means for rural properties specifically, why the impact is worse than most people realize, and what it takes to mitigate your vulnerability.
What a PSPS is, and why it isn’t going away
A PSPS is a deliberate, proactive decision by a utility company to cut power and reduce the risk of electrical infrastructure sparking a wildfire under conditions such as high winds, low humidity, and dry vegetation.
The practice has been authorized in California since 2012 and is firmly embedded in how the major investor-owned utilities (i.e., PG&E, SCE, SDG&E) operate during the fire season. After several lawsuits (e.g., the 2025 Palisades Fire), power companies are much more trigger-happy about shutting off power to protect their interests.
As California's wildfire conditions intensify and the state's aging grid infrastructure continues to lag, PSPS events are a permanent element of rural life in fire-risk zones. The average PSPS outage in California lasts close to two days, but some stretch beyond six.
Rural properties get hit the hardest by PSPS
Power restoration is not random when the grid goes down. Utilities prioritize circuits serving the most customers. Rural areas, by definition, have fewer customers per mile of line, which means they sit at the back of the restoration queue.
The California Association of Family Farms states it plainly: rural areas are often the last to be restored. While a suburb might get its power back in 12 hours, a rural property on the same utility could be waiting two, three, or more days — even after the weather event has cleared.
The concern isn’t just the duration of an outage. The stakes of an outage are also higher for rural property owners.
What’s at stake during a PSPS for a rural property
Urban renters lose their Wi-Fi and maybe a refrigerator's worth of food. Rural property owners have much more on the line:
Water. Most rural properties use a well, so no power means no pump — affecting your drinking water, livestock watering, irrigation, and fire suppression capability. A gravity-fed tank provides a buffer, but you can’t count on it when a PSPS lasts more than a day or two.
Livestock and animal operations. From feeding equipment and ventilation fans to refrigerated medications and incubators, animal operators require uninterrupted power. A two-day outage during the summer heat can cause serious losses.
Food storage. Rural properties often maintain significant food stores. A multi-day PSPS during peak summer temperatures can wipe out chest freezers, walk-in coolers, and months of stored reserves.
Communication. In a widespread PSPS event, cell towers run on backup power, and local wireless infrastructure degrades quickly. If your internet connectivity relies on grid power, that goes too, and you’re flying blind.
Medical devices. For people relying on medical devices, losing power can quickly become an extra stressful event — especially in rural areas with limited access to medical facilities.
HVAC. Summer PSPS events are the worst-case scenario. Temperatures in interior California (e.g., Kern County, Central Valley) routinely hit triple digits. No power means no air conditioning, and discomfort may escalate into life-threatening situations.
Business operations. For working ranches, hospitality properties, small businesses, etc., a multi-day outage means lost revenue, failed bookings, and operational disruption with potentially substantial financial consequences.
The reality is that while an urban or suburban home can use portable battery banks to weather a half-day outage, those devices can’t meet whole-property requirements during multi-day outages. So, what about a generator?
A generator is not a proactive strategy
Most rural property owners have a generator (or two or three), and it has its place during a genuine emergency. However, relying on a generator to operate a rural property through frequent, multi-day PSPSs is not a strategy. It's a reactive coping mechanism with compounding problems.
You burn through fuel, and you may not be able to resupply in time. (Ooof, the eye-watering fuel cost!) And you’d better be sure that you’ve maintained the generator properly so that it turns on when you need it to. Moreover, you must monitor the generator while it runs and tolerate the noise, fumes, and fire risks (which, ironically, are the cause of a PSPS event).
If no one is at the property to turn on the generator when the power shuts down, refrigeration shuts off, water stops running, and you’re as good as not having a backup.
Most importantly, a generator doesn't change your relationship with the grid. You still aren’t in control — you don’t know when the power comes back and how much more fuel you have to burn through to ride out the PSPS event with minimal damage. That isn’t energy resilience.
| System | No strategy | With Justplug |
|---|---|---|
💧Well pump |
Down | Running |
🌡Heating & cooling |
Down | Running |
🥩Refrigeration |
Down | Running |
📡Internet & comms |
Down | Running |
🔒Security & gates |
Down | Running |
🌾Irrigation & livestock |
Down | Running |
🏠Rental / ADU income |
Interrupted | Protected |
What energy resilience means for rural properties
The first step requires a mindset upgrade: the grid doesn’t have to be your primary power source. Can you still have a grid connection? Absolutely. The key is that you also have other sources working in parallel so that when one goes out, you aren’t stranded.
A properly designed off-grid or grid-independent solar system with a backup plan means a PSPS notification is just information. You go about your day: the well pump keeps running, refrigeration holds, and communications stay up — while others scramble.
For farms, working ranches, and small hospitality businesses, that design also has to account for variable loads, multiple structures, and the reality that guests or animals don't stop needing power because the grid is down.
However, energy resilience isn’t just about throwing more power generation options into the mix. It starts with intentional design, addressing availability, reliability, redundancy, and visibility:
Availability. The power source should be readily available in your location. For example, installing wind turbines in a windless location won’t do you any good. Solar is the best option for rural Sunbelt regions, thanks to long daylight hours and abundant sunshine year-round.
Reliability. The system should work continuously without human intervention. For example, it should have an automatic fallback so that if one power source fails, the backup kicks in whether you’re present or not.
Redundancy. System components overlap in function so that if one fails, the others continue working to maintain operations. For example, we often design systems with two smaller inverters wired in parallel rather than a big one.
Visibility. Control starts with a complete view of your entire energy infrastructure. People feel helpless during a PSPS event because they don’t know what’s next. On the other hand, most of our systems include remote monitoring capabilities for full transparency.
A resilient rural energy system using off-grid solar must be sized to your site’s production potential and actual loads. We start with an honest assessment of your requirements. For example, if you use the grid as backup in our Resilience solution for utility customers, we may discuss how long you need to sustain a specific level of operations without grid input.
Then, we determine the appropriate combination of solar, storage, and backup generation for your specific situation. For instance, we often incorporate a client’s existing auto-start generator as a last resort option. Implementing solar for resilience means designing it as energy infrastructure, not a cost-saving tactic (although you’ll get that too).
We build Justplug on the premise of supporting our clients’ energy resilience journey. Learn more about our approach and take our energy resilience quiz.
Take a proactive stance against PSPS
The unfortunate reality is that if you're a PG&E, SCE, or SDG&E customer living in a high fire-threat district, you're in PSPS territory year-round. Properties that have invested in energy independence are more valuable, more resilient to climate volatility, and better positioned to weather frequent and prolonged outages.
What does energy resilience mean to you, and how will you get there?
