How the PG&E Outage Turned This Entrepreneur into a Public Power Champion

Welcome to Public Power Week! As part of this week-long celebration that spotlights how public power providers serve their communities, the SFPUC is sharing this article that discusses the benefits of being a customer of a publicly owned utility.

For Jesse Ahluwalia, owning a laundromat is about much more than washing and drying clothes – it's about being part of a community and providing an essential service. Jesse, a longtime San Francisco resident and owner of The Laundry Corner, sees his business in the Inner Richmond as a neighborhood gathering place, where he knows his customers, greets them on the street and plays a small but meaningful role in their everyday lives.

At The Laundry Corner, electricity isn’t simply another operating expense. It is the foundation of the business. When the power goes out, business stops. “The laundromat industry is basically renting time with some machines with utilities,” Jesse said. “Power is a major utility that powers every single machine that we have. And so, if we can't have that, we don't have a business at all.”

Jesse experienced that reality firsthand during the massive power outage in December 2025 caused by PG&E. At The Laundry Corner, machines sat idle and the business lost revenue for several days. The December outage was followed by several service disruptions in the neighborhood, further underscoring how dependent local businesses are on a reliable electric system.

Public Power is an Attractive Option for Small Businesses

Those outages prompted Jesse to take a closer look at where San Francisco gets its power, and to consider what another model could look like. He learned that since PG&E owns the electric grid in the City, it effectively has monopoly control on the last few-miles connection for most San Francisco homes and businesses. Expanding public power would provide local businesses with a public power provider that is accountable to the people it serves, with a focus on reasonable and predictable rates and reliable service.

Jesse believes that having an alternative option for public power is important. Public power, he believes, should be about making sure an essential service works for the people and businesses that depend on it, not simply maximizing what can be made from selling electricity.

“It is a core utility necessary for us all to continue to live,” he said. “Can we make sure that everybody has power at a justifiable rate without having to think about that on a day-to-day basis?”

Electricity as the Lifeline for a City

Jesse’s perspective gets to the heart of what public power can mean for San Francisco. For San Francisco’s small businesses, reliable electricity isn’t a luxury. It allows them to serve their customers, support their employees and remain part of the neighborhoods they call home.

Jesse chose the laundromat business because he wanted to be connected to his community. Public power, he says, is ultimately about that same connection: making sure essential infrastructure works for the people who rely on it every day.

For businesses like The Laundry Corner, that is what is at stake. Public power is more than keeping the lights on. It is about keeping San Francisco’s communities and businesses moving.