ESPN broadcast

An electrical flash near Candlestick Park as the facility's lights went dark Monday

After power outages twice delayed their home game Monday night against the Pittsburgh Steelers, the San Francisco 49ers said Tuesday that neither the city nor Pacific Gas and Electric Company could guarantee that the lights would remain on during next month's playoff game at Candlestick Park, the team's first since 2003. 

“We have at least one playoff game, and we need to make sure we don’t have any more power issues at Candlestick Park,” 49ers spokesman Steve Weakland said. “We’re still working to figure out the how and the why. We don’t have that yet.” (The team's remaining regular season games are in Seattle and St. Louis.)

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee on Tuesday called the outages a “national embarrassment." Across the country, viewers watching ESPN's telecast of the game saw the stadium lights go out.

The outages may have been a combined result of separate problems with equipment owned by PG&E and the city of San Francisco, according to a preliminary investigation by PG&E officials. The city owns and operates the electrical equipment inside the stadium, while PG&E owns the equipment that feeds power into Candlestick.

Lee met with PG&E’s CEO, Anthony Earley, Tuesday morning to discuss the cause of the incident, and said Monday night that he would order the city’s police, fire, parks and public utilities commissions to investigate the outages. By Tuesday afternoon, the California Public Utilities Commission was also involved in the investigation.

PG&E said it is working with the city to find the cause of the outages.

“I have been in contact with San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White to discuss the latest on the investigation,” Geisha Williams, executive vice president of electric operations, said in a statement Tuesday. “Additionally, technical experts, including engineering teams from PG&E and the City and County, are meeting today to trace the causes of last night’s outages and to identify solutions that will prevent recurrence.”

The outages began at 5:18 p.m. Monday, just before the start of the game, when an overhead power line owned by PG&E that feeds electricity into the stadium snapped, sparking a sensational blue flash captured by an ESPN camera.

The line split less than half a mile from Candlestick Park in a residential area. When it snapped, electricity on the line continued to flow for a brief moment from one end of the severed wire to the other. That "arc" caused the flash, which looked almost as big as the stadium.

On Tuesday PG&E did not yet know why a backup power line that also feeds into the stadium to prevent such outages did not immediately switch on.

“We want to know why redundant sources of energy didn’t kick in,” PG&E spokesman Joe Molica said.

PG&E says the outage lasted for only a few minutes. However, it delayed the game by about 20 minutes.

The city says it took a while to switch on the 51-year-old stadium's lighting system.

"Candlestick is an old park, it's been in operation for more than 50 years," said SFPUC spokesman Tyrone Jue, who explained that it took "a number of minutes" to switch the stadium lights back on once power was restored.

PG&E and the city did not know why the stadium lost power a second time at 6:41 p.m. That outage delayed the game for about 15 more minutes. On Tuesday afternoon, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and California Public Utilities Commission investigators were trying to determine whether equipment inside the stadium caused the second outage. 

Molica said PG&E has not found any evidence that its equipment was to blame for the second outage, but he said the investigation is in its early stages.

During that outage, the lights for the stadium's Jumbotron remained on, while other parts of the park remained in the dark.

Demand for power does not appear to be an issue. The stadium was likely using the typical amount of electricity needed for a nighttime game, according to Molica.

The outage provided a great deal of free publicity for the Niners' proposed new stadium in Santa Clara. During the first outage, ESPN showed side-by-side photos of Candlestick, which was completed in 1960, and an artist's rendering of the Santa Clara stadium, which the team hopes to open in 2015.

On Tuesday, Santa Clara's mayor said his city's superior public infrastructure helped lure the Niners away from San Francisco.

“To say this would be unlikely here is too kind: it simply could not happen in Santa Clara,” Mayor Jamie Matthews said in a Tuesday interview.

Santa Clara’s publicly owned Silicon Valley Power agency runs its own power generation and distribution system, drawing on sources such as wind turbines on Altamont Pass.

“The reason they moved to Santa Clara is the reliability of our services,” Matthews said. “We have reliability in our electricity system that is unparalleled.”

The 49ers and Santa Clara announced earlier this month that they had agreed to a stadium deal whereby the city would borrow $850 million to cover construction costs. The team and the city are awaiting possible financing from the NFL to complete the deal. An NFL spokesman told The Bay Citizen Tuesday that Monday’s power outages would not affect financing deliberations.

Mayor Lee recently met with executives from the Golden State Warriors to try to lure the team to San Francisco. He has said that he has not stopped trying to keep the 49ers in the city.

Weakland, the 49ers spokesman, said the team had not yet prepared a contingency plan in case San Francisco cannot guarantee that the lights at Candlestick will remain on for next month's playoff game. The team has not contacted the San Francisco Giants about using AT&T Park, a Giants spokesman said.