PG&E electricity and gas monthly bills are going up

Company: Revenue to help pay for electric system safety, wildfire mitigation

PG&E electricity and natural gas residential customers should brace for a noticeable jump in their monthly bills this month, an increase the utility says will be used to finance efforts to improve safety and reliability.

The monthly bill for the average customer who receives both electricity and gas service from PG&E is jumping to $196.95 a month effective March 1, an increase of $8.73 a month from the average monthly rate that went into effect on Jan. 1, PG&E stated in a post on its website. That works out to an increase of 4.6%.

Robert Kenney, vice president of regulatory and external affairs, said in a post on a company blog that PG&E wanted to be upfront about the increases. “We understand it may be a hardship for many,” he wrote.

The state Public Utilities Commission approved the higher rates in December 2020.

At the start of this year, electricity bills were $133.84 for the average residential customer and will increase by 3.7%, or $5.01, as of March 1. Natural gas bills were $54.38 a month for the average gas customer and are set to rise $3.72 a month, up 6.8%.

Those increases are above the 2% increase last year in the region’s consumer price index, the official measure for inflation.

PG&E said it will use the increased revenue to finance a num

ber of measures and programs to improve the utility’s electricity and gas system.

The San Francisco-based utility’s planned improvements include reducing the risk of wildfires by upgrading and hardening the electricity system; enhancing vegetation management; expanding PG&E’s network of weather stations and high-definition cameras to monitor firedanger conditions; improving the utility’s program of intentional power shutdowns, officially known as Public Safety Power Shutoffs, which are designed to reduce the chance of fires caused by the company’s electrical equipment; and making improvements to gas system programs such as gas leakage surveys, leak repairs, engineering and preventative maintenance.

PG&E is attempting to bounce back from a decade of disasters ushered in by a 2010 fatal explosion in San Bruno that killed eight and destroyed a city neighborhood. In 2016, a federal jury convicted PG&E of felonies it committed before and after the explosion.

During the past decade, PG&E was found to have caused a string of catastrophic wildfires, including a deadly blaze in Amador County and Calaveras County in 2015, fatal infernos in the North Bay Wine Country and nearby regions in 2017, and a lethal conflagration in Butte County in 2018 that became California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire.

In 2020, PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the Camp Fire in Butte County.

The PUC last year levied a record-setting $1.94 billion penalty on PG&E for its role in the 2017 and 2018 infernos. That was the largest financial punishment ever imposed on an American public utility. It eclipsed the $1.6 billion financial penalty the PUC imposed on PG&E in 2015 for causing the San Bruno blast, at the time also a record-setting punishment.

PG&E last year emerged from a bankruptcy proceeding to reorganize its shattered finances, which buckled beneath a mountain of debts and wildfirerelated liabilities. Now the company hopes to push ahead with lasting reforms for how it operates and to steadily increase the safety of its electricity and gas system.

The utility has struck a deal to relocate its corporate headquarters to downtown Oakland from San Francisco. PG&E believes the shift will help it save money. The company intends to place its San Francisco office towers on the sales block, although that city’s office market is reeling from huge increases in empty offices and chunks of space being offered for sublease. By selling surplus properties and the headquarters, Kenney said in the blog post on the PG&E Currents page, PG&E expects the sales to “free up $800 million.”

PG&E also recently struck a deal to sell its electric transmission tower wireless licenses to SBA Communications, which is expected to raise $973 million. The licenses are granted when wireless service providers attach their equipment to PG&E towers.

“A significant portion of these proceeds will help lower customers’ monthly bills,” Kenney said. “These operational cost cuts help us direct more of the rates we all pay to provide safe and reliable service.”

PG&E stated that the current rate increase won’t be used to bankroll any of the company’s fire-related legal expenses.