Every August and September, the same text alert goes out to half the neighborhoods I work in: Southern California Edison is considering a Public Safety Power Shutoff for the Agoura Hills area. If you live off Kanan Road, up in Old Agoura, along Mulholland Highway, or anywhere in the hillside zones that SCE classifies as Very High Fire Hazard Severity, you’ve gotten that text. Some years it’s a warning that never materializes. Some years — like the red-flag stretches we’ve had recently — the power actually goes out for 12, 24, sometimes 48-plus hours.
Most homeowners think about PSPS in terms of the obvious inconveniences: no lights, no WiFi, the ice cream melting. What most people don’t think about is what happens to their appliances in the hours after SCE flips the power back on. That’s when I get the calls.
The outage isn’t the dangerous part — the restoration is
A clean, planned shutoff is actually pretty gentle on your appliances. SCE de-energizes the line, everything in your house just… stops. No damage there. The problem is what happens on the other end, when power comes back.
Grid restoration after a PSPS event isn’t always a smooth, gradual ramp-up. Depending on how SCE re-energizes your circuit and what else is happening on the local grid at that moment, homes can see a voltage spike or a few rapid on-off cycles as breakers reset and equipment re-synchronizes. I’ve also seen plenty of “restoration damage” that’s really homeowner-caused — someone runs a portable generator without a transfer switch, backfeeds the panel, or plugs a fridge straight into a generator that’s putting out dirty, fluctuating voltage instead of clean sine wave power. Either way, the appliances with the most sensitive electronics take the hit first.
What fails most often after a shutoff/restoration event, in order of how often I see it:
- Dishwasher and washing machine control boards. These sit right on the AC line with no real protection built in. A voltage spike during restoration is often the first thing to cook the board. Symptom: the unit won’t power on at all, or it powers on and immediately throws an error code that wasn’t there before the outage.
- Refrigerator/freezer control boards and compressors. Less common than you’d think — most fridges tolerate outages fine — but a hard restoration spike can trip the compressor’s start relay or fry the main control board on newer units with electronic thermostats. If your fridge comes back on but won’t cool, or runs constantly without ever cycling off, that’s usually the tell.
- Ovens and ranges with electronic ignition. Gas ranges with electronic igniters can lose their calibration or blow an igniter module during a rough restart. You’ll notice clicking that won’t stop, or a burner that won’t light at all.
- Garage door openers and well pumps. Not appliances in the strict sense, but I mention them because they’re on the same circuits and fail the same way — and if you’re on a well in Old Agoura, a fried pump control board during a shutoff is its own emergency.
Food safety is the other half of the equation
Separate from electrical damage, there’s the simple math of how long your food stays safe. A full refrigerator holds temperature for about 4 hours unopened. A full chest freezer can hold for 48 hours if you don’t open the door; a half-full freezer, closer to 24. Given that PSPS events in this area have stretched well past 24 hours more than once, plan accordingly:
- Keep an appliance thermometer in your fridge and freezer year-round, not just during outages. If the fridge is above 40°F when power returns, don’t trust anything perishable.
- Group items and keep the freezer as full as possible before fire season — ice jugs or frozen water bottles in empty space extend hold time significantly.
- Resist opening the doors. Every open costs you cold air you can’t get back without power.
What actually protects the equipment
I’m not going to tell you to unplug every appliance in the house every time SCE sends a warning text — that’s not realistic for most people. Here’s what’s actually worth doing:
Whole-house surge protection at the panel. This is the single best dollar-for-dollar investment for anyone in a PSPS-prone area. Installed at your main panel by an electrician, it catches restoration spikes before they ever reach your dishwasher or fridge. Typically $300-$600 installed, and it protects everything downstream at once — not just one appliance.
A transfer switch if you’re running a generator. If you’ve got a portable or standby generator, make sure it’s wired through a proper transfer switch, not a suicide cord backfeeding the panel. Beyond the fact that backfeeding is dangerous to utility workers, ungrounded or poorly regulated generator power is exactly the kind of dirty electricity that damages control boards.
Battery backup systems. I’m seeing more Powerwall and similar whole-home battery installs go in every year on the properties I service in the hills — it’s become a fairly normal response to living in this fire zone. They provide genuinely clean power during an outage and sidestep the restoration-spike problem entirely, since your house never actually loses power from the appliance’s perspective.
Point-of-use surge protectors, the kind you’d use for a computer, are worth it for anything with a sensitive electronic control board if you’re not doing whole-panel protection. Cheap insurance for a dishwasher or front-load washer.
After the power comes back on
Do a quick walk-through before you assume everything’s fine. Check that the fridge and freezer are actually cycling and cooling — not just running the light. Run a short cycle on the dishwasher and washer to confirm they respond normally to button presses instead of freezing up or throwing codes. If anything seems off, don’t keep running it repeatedly hoping it resolves itself; a board that’s partially damaged can fail completely on the next attempt.
If your appliances haven’t been right since the last shutoff — or you want surge protection installed before the next one — call us at (818) 532-7208. We work Agoura Hills, Old Agoura, Westlake Village, Calabasas, and the rest of the Kanan corridor, and PSPS season keeps us busy every year. Better to get ahead of it than to find out the hard way.