Summary:

California’s aging electrical grid is pushing more damaging electrical surges into Bay Area homes, and a single event can destroy thousands of dollars in appliances, electronics, and wiring. The new SB 593 law forces large utilities to study serious surge incidents and report their findings by 2027. Knowing how to respond in the minutes after a surge limits the damage, while whole-home protection, point-of-use protectors, regular inspections, a modern panel, and unplugging during storms keep a home far safer.

Time to Read	6-8 minutes
What You’ll Learn	Why the Bay Area has so many power surges What to do if an electric surge destroys your appliances How California’s Senate Bill 593 is helping protect customers The best way to protect your electronics from power surges
Next Steps	Schedule an electrical system inspection Install a whole-home surge protector Call Caccia Home Services for help

California’s aging electrical grid is sending more power surges into Bay Area homes than ever before, and the damage is adding up fast. Failing transformers, utility switching events, and lightning strikes can push voltage levels past safe limits, potentially frying expensive electronics like TVs, washers, and dryers.

One surge near Montgomery Station in December 2025 was so severe that it led to an explosion that took the BART system offline and stranded passengers in Downtown San Francisco for hours. It was just one of a long list of surge incidents to affect Bay Area residents over the past year.

SB 593, a new law first signed by Governor Newsom in 2025, forces providers to investigate the cause of all “significant” surges and disclose their findings by 2027. We’ll tell you why surges are happening so often, what the law aims to achieve, and what you can do to protect yourself from them, below.

The Growing Power Surge Problem in California

California’s power grid was built when the average home ran a fridge, a few lamps, and maybe a television or a radio. Today’s technology consumes significantly more power, which greatly increases demand on the grid day-to-day. This alone increases the risk of surges, but it isn’t the only contributing factor.

Lightning, storms, wildfires, earthquakes, and other local conditions can also knock out or destabilize the equipment that keeps voltage in check, like the transformers on the main line. When that happens, the excess charge travels straight to your panel, and in some cases, into your electronics.

From the plant to your home, it follows a fairly predictable path:

• Power is generated inside the plant at around 10,000-30,000 volts. From there, it’s sent on to a series of step-up transformers that raise it up to as high as 765,000 volts. Electricity loses voltage the further it travels, so this is important.
• It gets stepped back down in stages. A series of transformers and substations gradually lowers the voltage as the power moves closer to your neighborhood, until a final transformer near your home brings it to the 120/240 volts your panel can handle.

• Power surges happen when the voltage spikes. Lightning strikes, equipment failures, and earthquakes cause spikes that move faster than the system or your panel can react. The total voltage only needs to run about 5% over the safe limit to cause serious damage.

Think of it like running the hot water at your kitchen sink. If your water heater is set to 120 degrees, that’s roughly what you should get at the tap if you crank the faucet to maximum. A few degrees warmer or cooler is no big deal, but a sudden jump to 180 would burn your hands and potentially damage your pipes.

Why Take Action Now?

Power surges have been a problem for years, but the damage has reached a point where the state can no longer ignore it. The rules currently on the books don’t do enough to protect ratepayers or hold utilities accountable, but in order to effect real change, the government needs hard data to work from.

There are three main reasons why we’re seeing this happen now:

• The Bay Area is at an increased risk for surges. Earthquakes can damage substations and transformers and wildfires can force utilities to shut off or reroute power. Much of our local infrastructure is also at an age when it needs to be replaced or upgraded as well.
• The damage can be very expensive to fix. A single significant surge can destroy thousands of dollars in appliances, electronics, HVAC systems, or even the wiring in your home. With California deep in an affordability crisis, repairs like these are harder than ever for people to cover.
• No one was tracking the damage. Until SB 593, the state didn’t require utilities to record or report voltage incidents that harmed customer property, so the scale of the problem stayed invisible and utilities faced no pressure to fix it.

Lawmakers can’t build smarter regulations around a problem they can’t measure. SB 593 is the first step toward greater transparency and rules that hold utilities accountable for damage they could have prevented.

A Plain English Explanation of SB 593

SB 593, also known as the “Electrical Corporations: Significant Voltage-Related Incidents: Studies” bill, was officially signed into law as Section 913.14 of California’s Public Utilities Code.

Minor fluctuations in power flow within the home are normal and can happen dozens of times a day. In order to qualify as “significant” under SB 593, the surge voltage must be at least 5% higher than your normal rate. Here in the Bay Area, the standard is 120/240V.

The law then sets a separate bar for which incidents utilities actually have to study: those that cause $5,000 or more in damage to a customer’s property. That keeps the focus on the surges serious enough to matter without getting bogged down by every minor event.

Aside from this new definition, SB 593 also:

• Makes it mandatory for large utility providers to study how surges like these affect their customers
• Compels providers to publish and report their findings to the Legislature by July 1, 2027
• Asks utilities to examine whether these surges disproportionately affect poor, rural, or non-English-speaking households.

Residents that fall into these categories are often more vulnerable to damage because they have older systems, and may also have less capacity to recover from them.

What to Do Immediately After a Major Power Surge

Sometimes you’ll know you experienced a surge right away because your lights will flash or dim, the breaker a device is on will trip, or the microwave clock will start blinking. Smelling burned plastic near an outlet or wiring is another sign, as are scorch marks around a plug or a buzzing sound from your panel.

Safety always comes first. If you see smoke, smell something burning, or just don’t feel safe walking through the steps below, get out of the house. Call for help from a safe location next.

If you can safely do it:

1. Shut off the affected circuits at the panel if you can reach it safely. Do NOT touch the panel if it’s giving off heat, sparking, smoking, or is showing any other signs of obvious damage!!
2. Unplug any sensitive devices, regardless of whether they appear to be affected. Again, here, don’t touch or unplug anything that feels hot, looks scorched, or is making noise.
3. Call Caccia Home Services at (650) 294-8592 right away for help.

Once you’re out of the house, don’t go back in until your electrician or emergency services deems it safe. Document as much as you can by taking pictures and videos and writing down notes about what you find, including secondary damage like spoiled food, as it may be covered by your homeowner’s insurance.

Read More: Does Your Home Need a 200-Amp Panel?

How to Protect Your Home From Power Surges

You can’t control what happens out on the grid or when the next natural disaster will strike, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to protect your home from surges. These five steps will help you limit how much of the charge actually reaches your electronics.

1. Install Whole-Home Surge Protection

A whole-home surge protector is a device your electrician installs next to your electrical panel. When a spike comes down the line, it redirects the excess energy safely to ground.

All new builds must have a whole-home surge protector installed in order to meet National Electrical Code (NEC) guidelines. You’ll also need to install one if you upgrade your service or replace your panel, but we strongly recommend them for all customers here in the Bay Area anyway.

What You Should Know:

• Who Does It? Only a licensed electrician.
• What Do You Need? A Type 1 or Type 2 surge protector rated for at least 10kA.
• How to Do It: Your electrician will temporarily turn off the power, then install the surge protector in the main panel.

In rare cases, the panel itself may need to be upgraded first or relocated. We’ll let you know before any work starts in advance so you know exactly what to expect.

2. Add Point-of-Use Surge Protectors

While a whole-home protector can knock incoming surges down to a safe level, no single device can provide 100% protection on its own. Point-of-use surge protectors can help lower your risk for damage when both internal and external surges spike.

What You Should Know:

• Who Does It? Any adult in the home. Most of these devices just plug into an outlet like your average power strip, so installation only takes a few seconds.
• What Do You Need? Point-of-use surge protectors for every important electronic. These usually look just like power strips or outlet extenders, but should have “UL 1449” on the package as well as a clamping voltage of no higher than 400 volts and a joule rating of around 2,000.
• How to Do It: Plug the surge protector into a wall outlet near your devices, then plug each electronic into the protector instead of the wall.

Surge protectors wear down a little with every hit they absorb, so plan to replace them every 3-5 years or whenever they start to fail. Replace them right away if you notice burning or charring around plugs or the outlets themselves.

3. Schedule Regular Inspections

Electrical inspections can help you catch vulnerabilities in your system before they can cause the kind of damage that causes thousands of dollars to repair. This includes loose connections, poor grounding, arcing, short-circuits, and issues with the panel itself.

What You Should Know:

• Who Does It? It’s safe to visually inspect your panel, outlets, and wiring periodically, but a professional inspection will give you the most peace of mind.
• What Do You Need? Nothing other than a telephone to give us a call. If you have any questions you want us to answer, feel free to write them down or ask your technician when they arrive.
• How to Do It: Book a professional inspection every 3-5 years or whenever you notice a potential issue, like outlets that stop working or flickering lights. If your home is over 40 years old, we recommend scheduling inspections yearly instead.

Hidden electrical failures can start fires, but professional inspections often catch them early enough so they can be corrected for so much less.

4. Upgrade to a 200-Amp+ Panel

Your panel is the last line of defense before a surge reaches your circuits, and older ones aren’t equipped for the job. Older brands like Zinsco and Federal Pacific may even have serious manufacturing defects that make them a fire risk or prevent you from running newer technology.

What You Should Know:

• Who Does It? Only a licensed electrician. Panel work can be extremely dangerous, but the work actually needs to be handled by a pro in order to be considered up to code.
• What Do You Need? A permit and a modern 200-amp panel for most homes. We can help you shop for the right option, and we’ll even take care of the permitting process for you so it’s as hassle-free as possible.
• How to Do It: Schedule a service call with one of our electricians first. They’ll come out and take a look at your system, then make recommendations and give you a full quote.

Still have older knob-and-tube wiring? The job may be a little bit more complicated, but we can still get it done for you. Give us a call so we can help you come up with a plan to step into the future.

5. Unplug Electronics During Storms and PSPS Events

Contrary to popular belief, surges are more likely to occur when the power comes back on after an outage, not before or when it goes off. We recommend unplugging anything really valuable, like your TV or computer, if you know a storm or outage is coming.

• Who Does It? Anyone in the home who can plug and unplug electronics safely. This is a great opportunity to teach older kids how to be safe around outlets!
• What You’ll Need: Nothing but a little advance notice. If you don’t get a heads-up, just unplug your electronics as soon as you’re aware there’s an issue.
• How to Do It: Unplug computers, TVs, stereos, and any other device that you aren’t 100% ready to replace today. You can leave point-of-use surge protectors plugged in.

It’s old-fashioned, but sometimes the simplest solutions really are the best option.

Keep Your Home Surge-Ready with Caccia

Power surges are only going to get more common as the grid here in California continues to adapt to advanced technology and skyrocketing demand. While SB 593 is a good first step toward a solution, both the government and local providers still have a lot of work to do to protect customers from harm.

Don’t wait for a surge to start a fire that puts your loved ones at risk or makes your precious memories go up in smoke. Call Caccia Home Services at (650) 442-1470 to schedule an assessment today!

Frequently Asked Questions About Power Surges

Does homeowners insurance cover power surge damage?

It depends on your policy. Many standard policies exclude surge damage or cap it well below the cost of replacing an HVAC system or fried electronics, so it’s worth reading your coverage closely before you assume you’re protected.

How do I know if a power surge damaged my electronics?

Common signs include devices that won’t turn on, flickering or unresponsive screens, a burning smell near outlets, or appliances that suddenly run differently than before. Some surge damage is internal and shows up later as premature failure, which is why an inspection after a major surge is a smart move.

Will a power strip protect my devices from a surge?

Only if it’s actually a surge protector, since many power strips offer no surge protection at all. Even a true point-of-use protector only guards what’s plugged into it, so it works best as a second layer behind whole-home protection at your panel.

How often should surge protectors be replaced?

Most point-of-use surge protectors should be replaced every three to five years, or sooner if they’ve absorbed a major surge. Replace one right away if you notice burning, charring, or discoloration around the plug or outlet.

Are power surges more common in older homes?

Older homes are often more vulnerable because aging panels, outdated wiring, and worn grounding handle voltage spikes poorly. Brands like Zinsco and Federal Pacific are flagged as fire risks by many insurers and offer little protection against a surge.

Can I install a whole-home surge protector myself?

No. A whole-home surge protector is wired in at your electrical panel, which is dangerous, permitted work that has to be done by a licensed electrician to be up to code.