No more credits on your PG&E bill for power shutoffs

For the nearly 1 million customers who were inconvenienced by PG&E’s first massive planned power outage, the check for your troubles is literally in the mail this month. More precisely, a credit should have shown up in your November utility bill.

But don’t get used to it. PG&E said this week the credit it gave customers who lost power in the chaotic Oct. 9 public safety wildfire-prevention shutoff was a one-time only deal: $100 for residential and $250 for commercial customers.

The embattled utility does not plan to refund customers who lost power in the Oct. 23, 26, 29 and Nov. 20 shutoffs, which state regulators are investigating to see whether they met requirements to shut down power only as a last resort and to affect as few customers as possible.

PG&E only agreed to credit customers for the Oct. 9 shutoff because its public information efforts were so poor, with its website and customer service phones overwhelmed and conflicting reports of when and where outages would occur.

“We did not live up to their expectations when it came to communicating about this event,” PG&E President Bill Johnson said Oct. 29, announcing what he called one-time bill credits.

The bill credits came at the urging of Gov. Gavin

Newsom, who wrote Johnson blasting PG& E’s handling of the Oct. 9 outages to 738,000 homes and businesses from the Bay Area to the Wine Country and Sierra Foothills.

“This is not an industry standard practice,” Johnson said after agreeing to the bill credits. “But we believe it is the right thing to do for our customers in this case, given the challenges with our website and call center communications.”

But when Johnson said the credits would be onetime, he meant it. After last week’s shutdown to 50,000 customers from the Wine Country to the Sierra Foothills, the utility repeated that no more bill credits will be coming.

“The one-time bill credit is focused on the Oct. 9 Public Safety Power Shutoff event due to the hardship caused by the website and communications issues,” said PG&E communications representative Ari Vanrenen. “We recognize our execution in these areas fell short of expectations, and we have taken steps to reduce those issues going forward.”

Newsom has been quiet about bill credits since the utility agreed to them for the Oct. 9 shutoff. His office did not respond this week to questions about whether he thinks PG& E should pay customers who had to throw away spoiled food after the other outages.

Vanrenen noted that the Public Safety Power Shutoff program was approved by the California

Public Utilities Commission, which regulates private utilities, to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires sparked by power lines.

But the commissioners aren’t sure PG&E and other utilities such as Southern California Edison that also had shutoffs followed all the rules and opened an investigation Nov. 13. The Oct. 26 PG&E outage was even more massive than the Oct. 9 shutoff, affecting some 975,000 customers.

Critics argued the outages have been needlessly widespread, though PG&E said its crews found weather-related damage to its electrical equipment in at least 156 places from the Oct. 26 and Oct. 29 power shutoffs. The utility said crews found weatherrelated damage during the Oct. 9 outage in 116 places.

“It is important for the CPUC to determine if the utilities complied with using Public Safety Power Shut-offs as a last resort, and to collect the knowledge gained towards any revisions needed for next year,” Commissioner Genevieve Shiroma said at the time.

The bill credits for Oct. 9 have only added to PG&E’s money woes as it seeks to reorganize in bankruptcy court, facing multibilliondollar claims from deadly wildfires sparked by its power equipment in recent years. The utility reported $90 million in bill credits for the Oct. 9 shutoffs in its third-quarter report, which began showing up in bills this month.