Fines are probably harder to deliberately mislabel as capex, and therefore less likely to get approved by the CPUC to be passed on to ratepayers. That said, I think these proposed fines are silly. PG&E did actually try really hard to get the word out, burying folks under a mountain of mailers and text messages and social media posts and advertising.
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...
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...