Why the Lights Go Out in South Half Moon Bay, and What PG&E Is Rebuilding Before December

If you live in Ocean Colony, Canada Cove or Moonridge, your electricity comes over the same line that serves unincorporated south San Mateo County, all the way down to Año Nuevo. PG&E calls it the Half Moon Bay 1103 circuit. A press release from the South Half Moon Bay Stakeholder Group, published by Coastside Buzz on October 8, 2026, calls it the longest circuit in the Bay Area.

That shared line explains a lot about the south end of town. It's also why most of the repair work now meant to keep your lights on is happening far from your street. PG&E is working on 93 locations along the circuit, with a target finish date of December 1. Only 12 of them are in Half Moon Bay proper. The other 81 are down the South Coast.

One Wire From Town to Año Nuevo

The 1103 circuit serves about 5,000 service locations. A service location can be a home, a business or a facility. The in-town stretch covers Cabrillo Highway south of South Main Street, plus Ocean Colony, Canada Cove and Moonridge. From there the circuit continues into unincorporated south San Mateo County. Along the way it powers Cameron's Pub, the Aristocrat Hotel, Half Moon Bay Lodge, Joe's Restaurant and the Ritz-Carlton.

According to the release, the most common causes of outages on this circuit are vegetation and animals. A long line through wooded canyons and open ranchland has a lot of trees and wildlife along it. Each mile of wire is one more place a branch or an animal can cause a fault.

The Trouble Has a Paper Trail

PG&E has tracked this circuit for years. In a 2022 presentation on its fast-trip safety settings, which PG&E calls Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings, the utility used the Half Moon Bay 1103 as its example. The circuit had six outages in 2022, with data current as of July 31 that year. PG&E listed its fixes as adjusting sensitivity settings, installing technology to find outage sources faster, adding animal guards and changing patrols. That's laid out in a filing PG&E submitted with its tariff advice letters.

Those settings still matter. PG&E's own page on the Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings program says they can cause unplanned outages and are most likely turned on from May through November.

The complaints kept coming after 2022. At its May 14, 2025 meeting, the Midcoast Community Council recorded that Canada Cove and Ocean Colony were having power outages and internet problems, often from falling trees. The minutes say the City was working on the outages with PG&E.

The South Coast end of the line has had it worse. Supervisor Ray Mueller told the San Mateo Daily Journal that Pescadero went through more than two weeks of outages during the 2023 storms.

One recent winter storm showed how the south end of town differs from the rest of it. High winds on the morning of Thursday, February 19 knocked out power from Linda Mar to Pescadero, Coastside News reported. Power in the Poplar neighborhood was back by 10 a.m. At the same hour, 349 customers in Ocean Colony and 603 along the South Coast were still waiting.

How the 93 Sites Break Down

PG&E engineers and construction crews picked the project sites based on inspections, drone patrols and reviews of past outages. This is where they ended up:

Roughly seven of every eight sites are outside city limits. The release says plainly that even though much of the work is in the unincorporated south, the reliability gains should show up across the whole circuit. For someone in Moonridge, a crew clearing brush near Memorial County Park is part of the same project as the pole going in by Cameron's.

The work at each site is one or more of these:

• Pole replacements
• Wire replacements
• Reframing
• Animal guard installations
• Extensive vegetation work

Animal guards and vegetation work go straight at the two causes the release lists. Animal guards also appeared on PG&E's 2022 fix list for this circuit, so this round builds on earlier work. The release adds that the 1103 has more than 100 other maintenance projects scheduled this year on top of this one.

Who Pushed It Forward

The release credits a partnership among several groups. In the words of Half Moon Bay Mayor Debbie Ruddock, as published by Coastside Buzz:

"This work is moving forward thanks to a partnership of the City and County of San Mateo, Supervisor Ray Mueller, myself and the South Half Moon Bay stakeholder group, notably Richard Lotti of Ocean Colony."

Ruddock said PG&E expects better reliability across the whole Half Moon Bay circuit, "meaning a greatly reduced risk of outages." A neighborhood in town and a mostly rural district down the coast pushed for the same fix because they're on the same wire.

What the Next Few Weeks Look Like

Work started in September 2026. The October release puts the expected finish at December 1, which is a forecast and not a completion date.

According to the release, most of the work can be done with the power on, but some locations may need planned outages. Any work on a live circuit also carries some risk of an unplanned outage. PG&E says it will notify residents and businesses ahead of any planned outage.

Planned maintenance outages won't appear on a public map. PG&E's maintenance outage page says it doesn't post upcoming scheduled work, for privacy reasons. It notifies affected customers by letter and tries to reach them by phone. The page points questions to a local planned-outage coordinator or to 1-800-743-5000. A PG&E letter in your Ocean Colony or Canada Cove mailbox this fall is likely the only notice a work window will get.

PG&E's outage alerts page lists these tools for unplanned outages:

1. Account alerts. Account holders can turn on outage notifications in My Account. PG&E says a notice of a possible outage typically arrives 5 to 10 minutes after detection. A confirmed outage notice comes 20 to 30 minutes after PG&E learns of it, followed by restoration estimates and a notice when power returns.
2. Address or map-pin alerts. Anyone can sign up for alerts on an active outage by address or by dropping a pin on the map, without an online account. These alerts end when power comes back, so you have to sign up again for the next outage.
3. Text check. Texting "Status" to 97503 returns outage status for your address.

Map-pin alerts are handy for second-home owners and for anyone watching a parent's home on the South Coast from somewhere else.

At The Serdy Team, we live and work along this stretch of Highway 1 too, and we're following the 1103 work through December. If you own a home on this circuit, whether in Ocean Colony, Canada Cove or Moonridge or down the coast, and want to know how it fits the south-end market this winter, request a complimentary home valuation and we'll go over it with you.