AGAINST INCREASE
Lake County Board of Supervisors approve letter of opposition to proposed 4.9-percent increase requested by Pacific Gas & Electric for wildfire, other costs
LAKEPORT >> Lake County plans to join a growing list of protesters opposing Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) Company’s application for the “Recovery of Recorded Expenditures Related to Wildfire Mitigation, Catastrophic Events and Other Recorded Costs” that could result in a 4.9-percent rate increase for most of the company’s residential customers.
The county’s Board of Supervisors (BOS) Tuesday approved a letter of opposition to be sent to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) along with separate letters from each district supervisor.
PG&E filed the application with the CPUC on Sept. 16, 2021, using a bill insert to notify customers of its proposed rate increase. The application asks for up
to $1.468 billion in recovery costs during a 24-month period for the years 2017 through 2020, with a small amount dating back to 2015. PG&E claims the costs are related to wildfire mitigation activities, including planning and execution of Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS), vegetation management, temporary generation to support customers, as well as the company’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and other catastrophic events.
Drafted by Board Chair Bruno Sabatier and staff, the BOS letter states that approval of the PG&E application “would mean increasing the energy costs for vulnerable residents in communities that have seen poor energy reliability in recent years.” The letter specifies occurrences this year at two PG&E substations: “Customers reliant on PG&E’s Middletown Substation … experienced
205 outages in the period from Jan. 1 to Sept.13, 2021, alone, the average duration of which was 8.2 hours. Our residents served by the Konocti Substation experienced 155 outages in the same period, with those outages spanning an average of 11.9 hours. Eightythree percent of all outages faced by Lake County residents in the more than eight months surveyed were due to planned work, PG&E equipment or PSPS events. This surveyed period notably omits the fall 2020 season that included multiple PSPS events.”
The letter continues: “Portions of our county have been subject to repeated proactive outages, and the uncertainty presented by PG&E’s Wildfire Safety Program has made it more difficult for businesses and even local residents to invest in Lake County. When a restaurant
PG&E filed the application with the CPUC on Sept. 16, 2021, using a bill insert to notify customers of its proposed rate increase. The application asks for up to $1.468 billion in recovery costs during a 24-month period for the years 2017 through 2020, with a small amount dating back to 2015.
loses its entire food supply even once, that can be a devastating occurrence.
Businesses already facing significant threats as a result of Lake County’s devastating series of wildfires from 2015-2018 that consumed more than 60 percent of our landmass have endured what constitutes an additional and profound emergency in PSPS. The County of Lake is taking available measures to mitigate the effects of these on our communities, including support of local energy, disaster and climate change resiliency projects, but the challenges are long-term and difficult to satisfyingly address.”
The letter also acknowledges that the county is well aware that PG&E has “incurred costs, of late, as a result of their enhanced wildfire mitigation activities,” but points out, “The magnitude and immediacy of those costs are informed by decisions made by PG&E over a long period of time. Earlier investment in undergrounding and sensor-enabled technologies, for example, may have smoothed out some of the disruptions seen in recent years, and even prevented wildfire events for which PG&E was tragically determined responsible.”
In addition to its application to recover costs beginning Jan. 1, 2023, PG&E is requesting an expedited schedule to process its application with the expectation that CPUC would issue a final decision by September 2022. In her scoping memo and ruling, Assigned Commissioner and President of the CPUC, Marybel Batjer, noted that because the application consists of several memorandum accounts and evidentiary hearings are needed, the proceeding may take up to 18 months to resolve.
According to Batjer, the issues that need to be determined include whether: the CPUC should grant PG&E’s request to recover some $1.468 billion in revenue requirement; the recorded costs are reasonable and incremental in nature; the costs are appropriate to record and recover; the cost recovery proposal is reasonable; the CPUC should grant a 24-month recovery period or some other time period.
Comments about the PG&E application have been submitted to the CPUC since September and are posted on the CPUC website, https:// apps.cpuc.ca.gov/apex/ f?p=401:65:0::NO:::
At last check, 59 comments were posted, all of which protested the application and the proposed rate increase.