PG&E stumps for another rate hike.
Plan would increase costs by $1.50 for residential customers
PG&E customers can expect higher monthly bills if federal regulators approve the embattled utility’s latest effort to raise rates for its customers, the company said Thursday.
If approved by the Fed- eral Energy Regulatory Commission, the average residential customer’s bill would increase by $1.50 amonth, James Noonan, a PG&E spokesman, said Thursday.
Still, coming on the heels of PG&E’s victories in September with the state Legislature and outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown, the prospect of a rate increase drew opposition from state Sen. Jerry Hill, whose district includes parts of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
Over several months this year, PG&E raised the possibility it would tumble into bankruptcy unless state lawmakers and the governor approved measures that would ease the company’s financial exposure in destructive wildfires.
Gov. Brown in recent weeks signed a state legislative measure, SB 901, that’s designed to address California’s wildfire woes, but the plan has been blasted as a bailout for PG&E, which faces a forbidding mountain of liabilities linked to infernos that scorched the North Bay Wine Country and other nearby regions in October 2017.
The new law also paves a smoother path for PG& E to pass on some wildfire-related expenses and liabilities, in the form of higher monthly utility bills.
“PG& E was able this year to fool the Legislature, PG& E fooled the governor and now they are trying to fool the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,” Sen. Hill said.
“Any opportunity that PG& E has to get into ratepayer’s wallets, they are going to do it.”
In the FERC filing, PG&E predicts that its revenue requirements for electricity transmission in 2019 would total $1.96 billion, up 9.5 percent from the company’s 2018 revenue request with the federal agency of $1.79 billion, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Extreme weather, climate change, and California policies that hold utilities can be liable for causing a wildfire were among the factors that PG&E cited in its FERC filing. However, a consumer group, The Utility Reform Network, questioned whether PG&E is justified any longer in citing these as risks because the legislation erased much of the exposure.
“PG& E keeps talking about its risks, but the Legislature eliminated quite a few of those risks,” said Mindy Spatt, a TURN spokeswoman. “The big risk to PG&E is PGE’s own negligence.”