As part of our long-term plan to upgrade and modernize our grid, Southern California Edison (SCE) will be making electrical upgrades (as part of the Modoc Substation Project) in the city of Santa Barbara. You will see SCE or its contractors in your area excavating underground facilities and making upgrades to electrical equipment.
At SCE, it is our job to make sure that our customers have the robust electrical infrastructure needed to continue to power their future energy needs. Upgrading to newer equipment will make the power grid up-to-date and keep it reliable for you.
We understand that our activities may be disruptive when we do this important safety work and will do everything we can to minimize the impact to our customers. You may experience repeated outages, temporary road closures and overnight work in order for SCE to complete the project in a timely and safe manner.
During construction of the project, you may encounter SCE crews or contractors performing work that impacts public streets, sidewalks, trails, or other public right of way areas. SCE implements a number of safety measures to ensure that members of the public as well as SCE crews remain safe during project activities.
Whenever SCE crews or contractors are performing work that temporarily impacts public traffic areas – either for pedestrians or vehicles – SCE implements various measures to alert the public of construction activities and provide directions they can follow to avoid potentially harmful work areas and remain safe. These activities include SCE and its contractors coordinating with the appropriate jurisdictions to ensure proper safety requirements are met. Whether along streets or near public walkways and trails, SCE implements measures such as the placement of temporary fences that restrict public access to potentially hazardous work areas, posting public warning signs along impacted areas, positioning crew safety members to help guide commuters and pedestrians, conducting daily construction crew safety meetings and more.
SCE and contractor crews will be performing the work. SCE vehicles will feature the company’s logos and contractor vehicles will have signage indicating they are SCE “approved contractors.” Anyone associated with the work will also carry identification badges.
The duration of the project is estimated from now through December 2023. Activities will vary in different stages as depicted on the back of this letter. Please refer the project website for changes to the planned schedule.
Planned Hours of Work: Mostly daytime hours but there could be some evening work in commercial areas.
Planned Days of Operation: Monday to Saturday (closed on Sundays and Federal Holidays)
Here are some general tips you can follow to help you stay safe as either a pedestrian or driver while sharing the public right of way with construction crews.
- SCE will provide notification of construction activities. These could be additional letters, door hangers, traffic signs, and/or parking signs.
- To minimize traffic and outage impacts, some work will be conducted during permitted nighttime hours.
- There may also be noise associated with construction activities during hours of operation.
- Crews may need to access the electrical equipment on your property. Unless SCE notices an immediate safety concern, we will attempt to notify you before entering your property.
- To ensure your safety during construction, there may be traffic lane and sidewalk closures and no parking areas designated. There may also be street closures and detours based on permit requirements. Crew members will use appropriate traffic control signs and flags.
- Crews may need to dig, trim, or remove trees or other plant material to safely access equipment.
- For crews to work safely, SCE may schedule maintenance power outages during construction. In these cases, we will notify you by phone, text, email or mail at least 72 hours before the outages.
Safety Tips for Outages and Emergency Events
- Customers who require electric‐powered, life-support equipment should be sure to have a backup power system in place or make other plans for health and welfare during an outage.
- If you use medical equipment in your home, SCE offers a Medical Baseline program. To learn more about the program’s benefits and enrollment, please visit sce.com or call SCE at 1-800-655-4555.
- Make sure food stays as cold as possible by keeping refrigerator and freezer doors closed and placing blocks of ice inside.
- Learn how to manually open security gates and garage doors.
- Notify the security company that monitors your home or business.
- Protect computers, televisions and other sensitive equipment by unplugging them.
- SCE appreciates your partnership and support to ensure safe access to equipment that needs to be inspected.
- You can sign up to receive outage alerts using your preferred method of communication via sce.com/outage
- If you need more information or would like to know more about what SCE is doing to address the threat of wildfires, please visit sce.com/modoc or call the project hotline at (800) 569-3525.