Howard Street can be sketchy at times, but one part of the South of Market thoroughfare was of particular concern to some residents after streetlights were left dark on a four-block stretch for more than a year.

After The Chronicle made multiple inquiries, the lights finally came back on this week. What no one has answered is why the street was left in the dark for so long.

Sarie Lovell, 36, who works in solar-energy development, moved to the area in September 2013 and found immediate cause for concern: Every night on her way home from work, she had to navigate the darkened stretch of Howard from Fifth to Eighth streets.

Lovell was worried enough that she filed a complaint with the city’s Public Utilities Commission and Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which together are responsible for maintaining lights throughout the city.

Lovell said she lodged four complaints over the course of 15 months and got exactly one response from PG&E: an e-mail in February that she showed to The Chronicle, in which company officials said that they were aware of the problem and that it would be fixed within 30 day s.

According to PG&E, that outage was fixed March 24. But Lovell says that until a few days ago, the lights never came back on.

Separately, PG&E spokeswoman Fiona Chan said in a statement that the company received the first complaint about the outage Dec. 5. She did not respond to questions about the discrepancy.

“It was very frustrating,” Lovell said. “You hear all this lip service about how they are putting money into fixing the Mid-Market area, and then to not even have a basic commitment to public safety? I think it’s reasonable to expect this kind of thing to be a priority .”

One of the problems with that stretch of Howard, said Sunny Angulo, a legislative aide to Supervisor Jane Kim, who represents the area, is that the lights run on what is called a series loop. If one light goes out, the whole block goes dark, much like Christmas tree lights.

Kim did respond to a complaint from Lovell in early 2014, saying that she would pass along her concerns to the Public Utilities Commission and that the problem would be fixed soon.

PG&E manages about half the city’s 46,000 streetlights, with the rest coming under the utilities commission. The city tries to respond to reported problems with the lights under its care within 48 hours, said Tyrone Jue, a spokesman for the agency.

The city relies on the public to report outages, of which there were more than 4,000 in both 2013 and 2014, Jue said.

Most of the lights operated by the city use high-pressure sodium bulbs, which usually last three to five years. That will soon be changing, according to Jue, as the city replaces the bulbs in more than 18,000 of the 25,000 streetlights it manages with LED bulbs equipped with wireless controls.

The new bulbs have an estimated life of 15 to 20 years, are more energy efficient and will lower maintenance costs to the city, Jue said.

Just as important: The new lights will take the onus off of the public to report when streets go dark.

“The wireless controls will also automatically alert us to any streetlight outages, allowing us to more quickly respond,” Jue said. “We won’t be solely dependent on public reports of outages.

“The future looks bright for the SFPUC,” he said.

For its part, PG&E will be replacing more than 20 circuits that serve a total of more than 1,150 streetlights in San Francisco by the end of 2016, Chan said. The new circuits are expected to be more reliable and efficient, she said.

Kale Williams is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kwilliams@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfkale

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What's not working

Issue: Streetlights on a stretch of Howard Street, between Fifth and Eighth streets in the South of Market, went dark in 2013 and were left unrepaired for months despite complaints to PG&E, the utility responsible for maintenance.

What's been done: The lights came back on Tuesday night after The Chronicle made inquiries with the utility. A spokeswoman said PG&E will be replacing old circuits that serve San Francisco’s streetlights.

Who's responsible: Angela Billings, PG&E manager: (800) 743-5000. Outages can also be reported by calling 311, going to sf311.org or filing a service request with PG&E on its website.