San Diego Gas & Electric

San Diego Gas and Electric — SDG&E — serves approximately 3.7 million people in San Diego County and southern Orange County with electric service, and natural gas service across a similar but not identical footprint. A subsidiary of Sempra Energy, SDG&E operates in a service territory with a unique wildfire risk profile: the combination of Santa Ana wind conditions, low humidity, and dense development in fire-prone areas has made SDG&E an early leader in utility-scale wildfire mitigation technology. The SDG&E online portal and mobile app handle billing, payment, outage reporting, the outage map, and Public Safety Power Shutoff notifications — a feature that, as in PGE's case, has become a core part of the utility's digital customer communication.

SDG&E's wildfire history shapes its digital infrastructure priorities. The 2003 and 2007 Cedar, Witch Creek, and Guejito fires — some caused by SDG&E equipment under Santa Ana wind conditions — drove investment in both physical fire detection and digital customer communication. The PSPS notification and tracking system alerts customers in advance of planned de-energizations and provides an address lookup tool to check individual shut-off status. During active Santa Ana wind events, the outage center handles simultaneous traffic from customers checking PSPS status and reporting storm-related outages.

Portal failures at SDG&E affect customers during events when accurate information is most critical. Login failures block access to PSPS alerts and outage status during high fire-risk conditions. Bill payment processing returns errors after form submission, with no payment receipt and no clarity on transaction status. The outage map loads the San Diego County geography but fails to render the incident or PSPS shut-off zone layers, leaving customers unable to verify their status. The mobile app on iOS and Android can fail to authenticate or lose its session during backend degradation, forcing re-login at moments when customers are trying to access urgent information.

Outage.gg tracks SDG&E portal, outage map, and PSPS tracking status with real-time community reports from customers in San Diego County. If the SDG&E portal is broken, payments are not processing, or the outage or PSPS map is blank, the status page shows current conditions.