Power Outage Update

November 19, 2019

 Vice Chancellor, Administration

Dear Campus Community,

As we indicated yesterday, PG&E has informed us that there is a high likelihood of a power outage on campus beginning Wednesday morning and continuing through Thursday morning. Should this power outage occur, we will follow the same protocol as for previous outages, and transfer our electricity load to our campus-based co-generation plant. This will require us to go into power-saving mode and reduce campus operations in order to prioritize life safety, power to residence halls, and preservation of our research assets.

We will not make decisions on classes and campus operations until we have greater certainty that PG&E will act according to its predicted timeline. We will communicate any decisions regarding Wednesday’s operations by 5 p.m. today.

Instructional Resilience 
In the meantime, we strongly encourage instructors and teaching faculty to investigate and be prepared to offer alternate modes of instruction. Resources to help with this are available at the Center for Teaching and Learning website. If the PG&E outage occurs on Wednesday, instructors may access support for the creation of content delivered alternatively on the 4th floor of 2850 Telegraph (assuming their power is not also shut off). Research, Teaching, and Learning will provide hotelling space for instructors as well as drop-in, virtual, or scheduled consultations (bit.ly/bCourses). Staff from the Center f or Teaching and Learning and Digital Learning Services will be present to support course redesign considerations and the creation of alternatively delivered content including the use of Zoom and bCourses features and associated digital learning tools. Instructors  are encouraged to bring their own laptops. There is a parking lot located behind the building where parking passes can be purchased and additional, metered street parking, and two hour free parking throughout the local neighborhood. For additional questions or information, please contact teaching@berkeley.edu

Libraries
As with the most recent outage, we plan to keep Moffitt Library open for the duration of the power outage for its regular hours. 

Off-Campus Locations
To the best of our knowledge, UC Berkeley off-campus locations at Fourth Street, Telegraph Avenue, the Golden Bear Building and other downtown Berkeley locations will have power and operations will proceed normally. 

Please stay tuned to Berkeley News and pay attention to WarnMe alerts for the latest updates. Thank you for your understanding and for doing your part to help us uphold our commitment to our academic and research mission.

Sincerely,

A. Paul Alivisatos
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

Marc Fisher
Vice Chancellor, Administration

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