What we know about San Francisco’s December 2025 power outage, restoration timeline, and customer credits

A substation fire triggered a widespread blackout affecting about one-third of the city

A major power outage disrupted large parts of San Francisco on Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025, after a fire at a utility substation near Eighth and Mission streets. At the peak, roughly 130,000 customers were without electricity, a scale that officials and utility updates described as affecting about 30% of the city’s electric customers.

Firefighters reported working a one-alarm fire at the substation during the afternoon, and the incident prompted extensive disruptions that extended beyond darkened homes and businesses to transportation and street safety. The cause of the substation failure and fire was not publicly resolved in the initial days after the blackout, and an investigation remained underway as repairs continued.

Neighborhood impacts and cascading disruptions across transit and traffic

The outage’s footprint shifted as crews worked the system, with restoration updates indicating that remaining outages later concentrated in parts of the Presidio, the Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and small areas of downtown. With traffic signals out in multiple corridors, city emergency messaging urged residents to avoid nonessential travel and to treat dark intersections as four-way stops.

Public transportation experienced service interruptions during the outage. BART temporarily closed the Powell Street and Civic Center stations, with service later resuming. Muni rail service was also disrupted, including impacts tied to the Muni Metro and Central Subway operations. The city also faced street-level congestion related to signal outages, complicating emergency response and routine travel.

Restoration timeline: most customers returned within hours, but repairs continued for days

Utility restoration updates described a two-track recovery: a large share of customers regained power within roughly six to eight hours, while specialized repairs at the damaged substation extended outages for a smaller number of customers for several additional days. By Sunday, Dec. 21, restoration totals exceeded 110,000 customers, with tens of thousands initially still without electricity.

Full restoration was reported in the early hours of Tuesday, Dec. 23, after crews completed electrical connections needed to safely return service to the remaining customers. Throughout the weekend and into the following week, the utility characterized the substation damage as extensive and the repair plan as complex and safety-critical.

Automatic bill credits: $200 for residential customers and about $2,500 for businesses

Following the outage, the utility announced automatic bill credits for affected customers:

• $200 for eligible residential customers
• Approximately $2,500 for eligible business customers

The credits were structured to require no customer action and were expected to appear on bills as a customer satisfaction adjustment. The utility also indicated that customers could separately pursue a claims process for extended outages, distinct from the automatic credits.

Key unresolved point: the definitive root cause of the substation fire and system failure was still under investigation after power was restored.

What remains to be answered

Even after service returned, the outage raised ongoing operational questions: how the initial failure propagated to a citywide disruption; what engineering findings would determine the initiating cause; and what changes, if any, would follow for substation hardening, redundancy, and communications during high-impact outages. Those answers depend on the findings of the continuing investigation and any subsequent regulatory or city actions.