A question posted on the City of Manteca Facebook page underscores why the California Public Utilities Commission, Governor Gavin Newsom, and the California Legislature likely will never have to worry about a lasting consumer revolt at the ballot box.
“How is our neighborhood off when the wires are underground?”
It was posted at the height of the PG&E power outage last week that many of the 61,000 or so impacted customers in Manteca, Tracy, and a Lathrop enjoyed for as long as 12 hours.
PG&E characterized the outage as a need to “rebalance the grid.”
That is about as specific as saying Modesto is located somewhere in our solar system.
It triggered more questions than it answered.
*Was it a case of more demand and not enough power, even though it was not 100 degrees plus as it was the prior day?
*Was it an issue with inter-ties to the power grid?
*Was it a poorly maintained PG&E distribution system?
*Was it connected with efforts to isolate part of San Joaquin County for a potential planned public safety outage due to red flag conditions surfacing such as high winds and low humidity?
A more specific answer would point to specific ills and specific calls to action directed at the right people, which would be the legislature and governor and not PG&E.
Something more specific, though, would be lost on an electorate that zeroed in on the CPUC and PG&E spiel that soaking customers for $17 billion in rate hikes would reduce power outages.
There is much more to the problem than simply burying lines.
And it’s not just the fact PG&E was apparently edging very close to, for want of a better word, imploding a part of their distribution system.
Burying every transmission and distribution line in California is so cost prohibitive that it would put more than just a dent into the gold reserve at Fort Knox.
And even if you had the cash to do so, the power distribution is only one piece of the Rubik’s cube when it comes to supplying California with electricity.
The energy crisis, defined as reliability and supply, may be PG&E’s doing. The conditions to create it, though were developed by the CPUC — founded originally as a watchdog for California consumers — and the green-at-all-costs policies of the California Legislature and Newsom who hopes to take California values to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in 2028.
PG&E got into a reliability problem because the CPUC didn’t do its job. That doesn’t excuse PG&E of responsibility.
It’s just that you wouldn’t expect the police to look the other way if criminals were looting a bank. But that is exactly what the CPUC did when they green lighted PG&E rate increases to make system upgrades over the years and never followed up to make sure it was all done.
And it is also what the CPUC didn’t do that made conditions ripe for PG&E to blow up 8 customers in San Bruno in 2010 and burn to death another 843 in Paradise in 2018.
PG&E copped to 84 counts of manslaughter in the Paradise wildfire their archaic and poorly maintained transmission lines sparked.
That means the company delivering your power today was essentially convicted of being a felonious killer corporation 84 times over.
As such, PG&E is an easy target for rage.
But they do not deserve credit for the high cost of electricity you use as opposed to the high cost of getting it to your meter.
The California Legislature’s green edicts over the decades have led to higher energy costs.
First, it was a demand implemented by the CPUC that a set amount of PG&E’s power had to be green generated long before the technology was in place to produce enough to meet the arbitrary goal.
The state edict forced PG&E into long-term contracts to lock in enough green power to meet the mandate. That’s how PG&E was paying significantly higher rates for green power when the market costs for it plunged.
The 100 percent renewable power edict coupled with the ban on the sale of new fossil fueled vehicles starting in California in 2035 that, barring the courts overturning, has been effectively killed by Congress is also pushing up energy prices.
In the middle of the fight over whether the CPUC can legally shift costs back on to residential solar users after forcing PG&E to lock them into lower rates to entice people to install solar in the first place, some solar users are being soured by another development.
They are solar users who installed systems without factoring in charging electric vehicles.
Instead of wiping out their monthly energy bill by writing a check each month to pay off the cost of installing their system, they are now writing two checks for power.
And while California regulations that have prompted two in-state refineries to get ready to pull the plug on operations may send gas prices at the pump up to $8 a gallon as some experts are predicting, being at the mercy of PG&E to power your car as well can get expensive quick.
PG&E had six rate increases last year.
The were seemingly endless gas rate increases in 2024 as well.
But there were also almost as many price drops.
The end result in the price of gas per gallon at the end of 2024 was 0.44 percent lower than at the start.
PG&E rates never drop.
The CPUC’s Public Advocacy Office indicates since 2014, PG&E rates have gone up 121 percent as opposed to the overall California inflation rate of 36 percent.
Meanwhile, gas price increases have basically mirrored the inflation rate.
PG&E did not do it on their own.
They got a lot of help from the CPUC, various governors, and the California Legislature.
Consumers need to develop a deeper understanding of how basic essentials such as electricity are produced and delivered and the framework of regulations Sacramento puts in place that controls how for-profit power firms like PG&E operate.
When they do, they can take aim at legislators and governors at the ballot box who not only give lip service to doing something about high energy costs but who pursue absolute green mandates that exacerbates the problem.
This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
