Partly that but also partly "we spent that sweet infrastructure money on other stuff so we have to turn things off now because our infrastructure is decrepit and we learned that we get sued when our transformers explode and cause fires, so we are, again, passing the inconvenience on to consumers.

Oh come on, as a consumer you do have to choose a bit between "I want it...cheap!" and "I want to sue you to rebuild when you giving me what I want inevitably causes a fire."

We should expect fires. We should expect more if we run spark generating machines through the forest. That's fine. Just raise the rates to cover the insurance cost.