PG&E customers face higher monthly bills early next year

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers can expect to ring in the New Year with a 2.8 percent hike in their monthly bills during the first two months of 2018, the utility giant proposed in a recent regulatory filing.

In the rate filing, PG&E asked that the state Public Utilities Commission defer an annual recalculation of monthly bills until March 1. Normally, the recalculation leads to the increase going into effect on Jan. 1. PG&E’s proposal would produce a 0.5 percent increase in January and a 2.3 percent jump in early March.

“An approval of this request will defer what is otherwise likely to be a rate increase to coincide with another planned rate change,” Erik Jacobson, PG&E’s director of regulatory relations, wrote in a letter to the PUC. “Greater stability in customer bills” would be the result of the deferral, Jacobson added.

At present, the average monthly residential PG&E bill is roughly $165.10 for customers who receive both electricity and gas services from the company. That’s much higher than monthly bills in the recent past.

“The monthly bill is a lot when you compare it to what it was just a few years ago,” said Mark Toney, executive director with The Utility Reform Network, a consumer group.

At the end of 2015, PG&E monthly bills averaged $137.66 for the average residential customer. By the end of 2016, that had risen to an average of $151.80, an increase of 10.3 percent in a year.

The current estimated monthly bill of $165.10 is 8.8 percent higher than a year ago.

All of these increases are running well ahead of the annual rates of inflation for the respective years.

The Bay Area inflation rate, measured by the region’s consumer price index, rose 2.6 percent in 2015, 3 percent in 2016 and 3.5 percent over the 12 months that ended in October, according to figures provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Our biggest concern is that more and more people are falling behind on paying their monthly bills and as they fail to pay their bills, more people are having their power shut off,” Toney said. “PG&E monthly bills are just out of control.”

The changes in the bills result primarily from two proceedings before the PUC and one proceeding before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

San Francisco-based PG&E has already been facing harsh criticism for its role in causing a fatal explosion of a gas pipeline in 2010 that killed eight people and destroyed a San Bruno neighborhood. In 2015, the PUC imposed a $1.6 billion penalty on PG&E for causing the San Bruno disaster, the largest such regulatory punishment ever levied on an American utility.

In 2016, a federal jury convicted PG&E for crimes the utility committed before and after the explosion. In January of this year, PG&E became a convicted felon when a judge imposed the maximum sentence for the company’s explosion-linked crimes.