How does any kind of fine for PG&E not end up being a regressive tax? As long as they are the only supplier in NorCal the costs will just be passed on to all NorCal residents.
Also, they are not the only supplier in NorCal, SMUD and many community choice energy organizations exist.
That would be a decision made by the government of California, not by PG&E. Their budget has to be approved by the state.
There were some fun articles back when they were blamed for fires about how PG&E had spent the last several years trying to allocate money to equipment maintenance only to have their budget rejected whenever they tried.
I assume the idea behind the current setup is that having the state own a power company would be "communist", whereas having a "private" power company for which the state determines the areas it serves, the rates it charges customers, and how it spends its money is "not communist".
That sounds like the worst of both worlds.
Oh, like PG&E would never commit fraud to conceal bnot doing what it is legal obligated to do with regard to safety.
I mean, its not like its been convicted of 91 federal and state felonies in two separate incidents producing substantial property damage and death which involved exactly that behavior.
The PUC controls (some of) what PG&E is legally obligated to do, but it doesn't control what PG&E actually does.
Except for the part where they control what PG&E is and isn't allowed to spend on?
AKA we're not controlling what you do, jus your ability to do it.
Once again, PG&E’s 91 recent state and federal felony convictions demonstrate that controlling what the company is legally allowed to do with resources is not the same thing as controlling what the company actually does with resources.
It is a total mind-fuck how tied up we are with that company.
But, I do have some hope that at some point in the future mini-grid technology will replace these large juggernauts.
Pointing to medical baseline customers as some ultra-vulnerable population and claiming that PG&E has extra responsibility to keep their power on feels disingenuous. Those are precisely the users who should be most keenly aware of their uptime requirements and have their own backups provisioned.
It felt weird writing that. It makes me sound like a PG&E apologist. Changing focus...
PG&E has optimized its business to reduce transparency and accountability, while also engaging in creative accounting to drive up costs and improve their take under a cost-plus model. Read the Camp Fire report (it's well-written and engaging) to get a better picture of the firm and its habits: https://www.buttecounty.net/Portals/30/CFReport/PGE-THE-CAMP...
(As an aside, reading that report, it's clear that Californians surely share some of the blame here. Overzealous conservationist regulation has made it unnecessarily difficult to do infrastructure maintenance. You can't do work in one season because the weather makes it dangerous or you're not allowed downtime. You can't do work in the other season because there's nesting birds on your poles. Or you can't cut down that protected heritage tree. And things like CEQA make building new unreasonably difficult, so you have to live with what you've got.)
Prior to 2014, the CPUC was run by a dude soliciting bribes from those he regulated. So it's not surprising that the organization isn't doing a great job of putting consumer interests first. Corporate culture flows from the top: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CPUC-head-Michael-Pee...
PG&E has taken all of us for a ride, and has managed to do it despite a huge degree of regulatory oversight. We pay some of the highest rates for electricity in the United States, through some of the most complicated rate plans, and still don't manage to keep the lights on or avoid setting fires. And the rate of price increases make healthcare and higher education almost look sensible. See slide 28: https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/CPUCWebsite/Content/Ne...