Posted on 10/31/2020 11:10:44 AM PDT by Mariner
California’s official advocate for utility ratepayers wants to have PG&E fined $165.7 million for mishandling a series of deliberate wildfire-safety blackouts last fall.
The Public Advocates Office of the California Public Utilities Commission said the commission should punish PG&E Corp. for failing to adequately warn hundreds of thousands of customers, including those relying on reliable electricity to power medical devices, about the October 2019 so-called public safety power shutoffs.
In a legal brief filed late Friday with the commission, the advocates said the blackouts were “a major public safety failure. PG&E put the lives of many vulnerable customers at risk, and either failed in or disregarded, its obligations to public safety partners, local agencies, and essential service workers.”
The blackouts — including three in one week — were a major debacle for Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which was already struggling through bankruptcy proceedings because of liabilities from the 2017 and 2018 wildfires. The size and duration of the shutoffs, engineered as ferocious Diablo winds rolled through Northern California, infuriated customers, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Just send the bill direct to the consumers.
I’m here in Washington state and we are selling lots of hydro electricity to California. My rates already higher than they should be.
If PG&E has to pay a big fine likely my rates will go up even more.
We fine you for not shutting off the power and starting a fire. We fine you for trimming trees too close to power lines which can start on fire. And we fire you for shutting off the power to prevent fires in trees we fine you if cut. Just walk away and let the State of California go dark, permanently!
l8r
I have no sympathy whatever for PG&E. Its corrupt institutional culture is a threat to the health and safety of California’s people. Its shareholders should be zeroed out and its bondholders made the new shareholder, with the latter having the fate of the former to encourage them to TOTALLY replace PG&E’s institutional culture.
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