PG&E's biggest shutoff in years ran three days. Plan for the fridge.
HoldBackup · Issue 2 · October 27, 2026
Disclosure: One store link in this email is an Amazon affiliate link, marked "paid link." If you buy through it, HoldBackup may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, HoldBackup earns from qualifying purchases. HoldBackup has not lab-tested any product here. Product numbers come from the maker's published specs, and outage numbers come from the sources cited below.
From the evening of October 14 to the evening of October 17, PG&E cut power to tens of thousands of customers to lower wildfire risk. Fire season isn't over. This issue covers what happened, then one way to keep the fridge cold through the next multi-day shutoff.
The Signal
ABC7 called it "PG&E's largest Public Safety Power Shutoff event in years." It began Wednesday evening, October 14, with Diablo winds, low humidity, and dry vegetation. Gusts reached 67 mph.
- By 11:30 p.m. that night, about 46,000 customers were de-energized across 19 counties. 29 counties were part of the event in total.
- ABC7 reported more than 68,000 customers affected across PG&E's service area on October 16.
- On Saturday morning, October 17, about 11,400 were still out in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Kern counties. PG&E's final update at 7:20 p.m. said virtually all customers were restored.
- PG&E opened about 40 Community Resource Centers during the event.
A smaller one followed. About 365 customers in Butte, Lake, Napa, Sonoma, Solano, and Yolo counties lost power around 8 p.m. on Friday, October 23. All were restored by 4:30 p.m. the next day (PG&E).
Earlier in the month, on October 6, Sunrun and Tesla home batteries delivered a record 745 MW to California's grid during a heat wave. That is 28% above the September 9 record of 580 MW that Issue 1 covered (Sunrun, Electrek).
In the Berkeley Hills, dozens of homes on Grizzly Peak Boulevard lost power. Resident Susie Bailey told ABC7 that rooftop solar and a backup battery made it manageable. "I understand why they're doing it, but it's hard on us."
Most readers don't have rooftop solar and a home battery. For a household without them, a shutoff that runs a day or more puts two things at risk: the food in the fridge and freezer, and the phones and Wi-Fi. USDA says a closed fridge keeps food cold for about 4 hours without power. A shutoff like this one lasts much longer than that, so this issue starts with the fridge.
The Pick: Jackery Explorer 1000 v2
Sold as: Jackery Explorer 1000 v2 Portable Power Station, 1070Wh, 1500W
This is the pick in the HoldBackup refrigerator guide. Jackery lists a 1,070 Wh battery and a 1,500 W continuous inverter with a 3,000 W peak rating. That peak rating is what has to cover the compressor's startup surge. Check both ratings against your own fridge before you buy.
Maker specs:
- 1,070 Wh, LiFePO4 cells, rated 4,000 cycles to 70%+ capacity
- 1,500 W continuous, 3,000 W peak
- Pure sine wave output, per Jackery's support page
- 3 AC outlets (120 V, 1,500 W total), USB-C 100 W, USB-C 30 W, USB-A 18 W
- Recharge: wall about 1.6 h, car 12 h, solar up to 400 W in
- 23.8 lb
The guide does the arithmetic. A fridge averaging 50 W works out to about 21 hours on paper from 1,070 Wh. At 80 W it's about 13 hours. Those figures leave out inverter losses and the station's own consumption, so real hours will be fewer. They come from division, and nobody has run this station with your fridge. HoldBackup has not lab-tested this unit.
Fits when
- Your fridge's running and startup requirements fit under the inverter ratings
- You want battery power without storing generator fuel (the cooling fan can make some noise)
- You can recharge between outages from the wall, a car, or up to 400 W of solar
- You can check the runtime with your own fridge before an outage
Falls short when
- The shutoff runs for days and you have no way to recharge. On paper, one charge covers less than a day at 50 W, and the October 14 event ran three days.
- Two compressors, such as a fridge and a freezer, start at once and the surge rating has to cover both
- The load is a furnace blower, a well pump, or a whole panel
- You need a 0 ms UPS for a server. Jackery says it is not one.
Store link (Amazon sets the price, and it changes):
The full guide covers how to find your fridge's numbers, a table of runtimes on paper, and three other stations in the same classes: Running a refrigerator on a portable power station
The Check: 15 minutes
Do this while the power is on.
- Look up your address. PG&E customers can check it at pge.com/pspsupdates. SCE's PSPS page showed zero customers in a shutoff or under consideration when we checked on October 27.
- Find the fridge's yearly kWh. It's on the yellow EnergyGuide label or the spec sheet. Divide by 365 for a rough daily figure. A fridge using 1.2 kWh a day averages 50 W.
- Label it. Write the daily kWh and average watts on a piece of tape on the side of the fridge. During an outage you won't have to look anything up.
- Start a meter if you have one. Plug the fridge into a plug-in energy meter and leave it for 24 hours. It shows real running watts and daily energy, which beats the label. It won't catch the startup surge, so leave the inverter several times the running watts in headroom.
- Write a charge plan. If you own a station, charge it to full now. Write down how you'll recharge it: wall power when it returns, a car parked outdoors (never idling in a garage), or solar.
If you don't own a station, keep the doors shut. USDA says a full, closed freezer holds its temperature for about 48 hours, or about 24 if half full.
One more guide: the chest freezer
A full chest freezer holds out longer than the fridge, but a three-day shutoff can still beat it. The chest freezer guide covers how many watt-hours a freezer needs in an outage, how to do the runtime math, and what to check on the inverter before you buy: Running a chest freezer on a portable power station
Browse every guide (UPS units, power stations, and generators) at holdbackup.com.
Disclosure: The store link marked "paid link" goes to Amazon with HoldBackup's affiliate tag. If you buy through it, HoldBackup may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, HoldBackup earns from qualifying purchases. HoldBackup has not lab-tested these products. Specs are the maker's published figures, and runtimes are arithmetic from the guide. Full disclosure.
Sources: PG&E, Oct 14–17 PSPS updates · ABC7, Oct 16, 2026 · PG&E, Oct 23–24 PSPS · Sunrun · Electrek, Oct 14, 2026 · Jackery Explorer 1000 v2 product page · FoodSafety.gov power outage chart
HoldBackup Team