Anyone who believes the last few years’ spate of ultra-destructive wildfires has diminished the clout of California’s biggest privately owned electric companies will now have to accept reality: They are as powerful as ever, if not more so. Consider the latest achievements of PG&E, the nation’s largest power provider and always a pace-setter for other companies, like Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. Within the space of 14 days last fall, PG&E, with a little help from its colleague utilities, killed a legislative bill designed to provide oversight of its spending on wildfire mitigation, and then won a $944 million rate increase from the state’s Public Utilities Commission to “reimburse” it for storm damage expenses and its work to lessen the chances of starting more fires.
That’s right, no one really knows exactly what PG&E or the other big monopoly utilities are doing to prevent more fires like the ones that almost pushed them into bankruptcy three years ago. But PG&E still will get almost $1 billion from its customers for whatever it is doing, or almost $6 per month from all of its more than 5.6 million customers, both residential and commercial.
More increases are coming, too. The latest PG&E increase comes atop three earlier ones this year. The other big generating firms have not gotten as many recent increases, but the precedent has now been set.
Meanwhile, by law, no utility is supposed to get a nickel from the PUC without strong evid.