The commission vote will slightly decrease the profit margins of Edison and three other big utilities beginning next year. Edison’s rate will fall to 10.03% from 10.3%.

Customers will see little impact in their bills from the decision. Because the utilities are continuing to spend more on wires and other infrastructure — capital costs that they earn profit on — that portion of customer bills is expected to continue to rise.

The vote angered consumer groups that had detailed in filings and hearings at the commission how the utilities’ return on equity — which sets the profit rate that the companies’ shareholders receive — had long been too high.

Among those testifying on behalf of consumers was Mark Ellis, the former chief economist for Sempra, the parent company of San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas. Ellis estimated that the companies’ profit margin should be closer to 6%.

He argued in a filing that the California commission had for years authorized the utilities to earn an excessive return on equity, resulting in an “unnecessary and unearned wealth transfer” from customers to the companies.

Cutting the return on equity to a little more than 6% would give Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, SDG&E and SoCalGas a fair return, Ellis said, while saving their customers $6.1 billion a year.

The four commissioners who voted to keep the return on equity at about 10% — the percentage varies slightly for each company — said they believed they had found a balance between the 11% or higher rate that the four utilities had requested and the affordability concerns of utility customers.

Alice Reynolds, the commission’s president, said before the vote that she believed the decision “accurately reflects the evidence.”

Commissioner Darcie Houck disagreed and voted against the proposal. In her remarks, she detailed how California ratepayers were struggling to pay their bills.

“We have a duty to consider the consumer interest in determining what is a just and reasonable rate,” she said.

Consumer groups criticized the commission’s vote.

“For too long, utility companies have been extracting unreasonable profits from Californians just trying to heat or cool their homes or keep the lights on,” said Jenn Engstrom at CALPIRG. “As long as CPUC allows such lofty rates of return, it incentivizes power companies to overspend, increasing energy bills for everyone.”

California now has the nation’s second-highest electric rates after Hawaii.

Edison’s electric rates have risen by more than 40% in the last three years, according to a November analysis by the commission’s Public Advocates Office. More than 830,000 Edison customers are behind in paying their electric bills, the office said, each owing a balance of $835 on average.

The commission’s vote Thursday was in response to a March request from Edison and the three other big for-profit utilities. The companies pointed to the January wildfires in Los Angeles County, saying they needed to provide their shareholders with more profit to get them to continue to invest in their stock because of the threat of utility-caused fires in California.

In its filing, Edison asked for a return on equity of 11.75%, saying that it faced “elevated business risks,” including “the risk of extreme wildfires.”

The company told the commission that its stock had declined after the Jan. 7 Eaton fire and it needed the higher return on equity to attract investors to provide it with money for “wildfire mitigation and supporting California’s clean energy transition.”

Edison is facing hundreds of lawsuits filed by victims of the fire, which killed 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes in Altadena. The company has said the fire may have been sparked by its 100-year-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon, which it kept in place even though it hadn’t served customers since 1971.

Return on equity is crucial for utilities because it determines how much they and their shareholders earn each year on the electric lines, substations, pipelines and the rest of the system they build to serve customers.

Under the state’s system for setting electric rates, investors provide part of the money needed to build the infrastructure and then earn an annual return on that investment over the assets’ life, which can be 30 or 40 years.

In a January report, state legislative analyst Gabriel Petek detailed how electric rates at Edison and the state’s two other biggest investor-owned electric utilities were 50% higher than those charged by public utilities such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The public utilities don’t have investors or charge customers extra for profit.

Before the vote, dozens of utility customers from across the state wrote to the commission’s five members, who were appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, asking them to lower the utilities’ return on equity.

“A profit margin of 10% on infrastructure improvements is far too high and will only continue to increase the cost of living in California,” wrote James Ward, a Rancho Santa Margarita resident. “I just wish I could get a guaranteed profit margin of 10% on my investments.”

The post State regulators vote to keep utility profits high, angering customers across California appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Eight in 10 Eaton Fire families remain displaced with most running out of housing funds, according to research by the nonprofit Department of Angels. Fire survivors say without support from SoCal Edison, families cannot move forward in their recovery while fearing where they will sleep next month.

“We are not here in anger. We are here in love for our community,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network. “When a company’s fire destroys or contaminates homes, that company has a responsibility to keep families housed until they can get back home.”

A group of survivors led by Chen’s group, the Eaton Fire Collaborative Leadership Council, the Clergy Community Coalition and the Altadena Town Council conducted a news conference Tuesday morning in Altadena asking the utility company to advance temporary housing support immediately while meeting obligations it already owes.

SoCal Edison has liquidity and state-backed protections, while displaced families are running out of options, according to coalition leaders.

“Every other California investor-owned utility advanced emergency housing relief after causing a wildfire, even without these protections,” Chen said. “Through the Wildfire Fund, state-approved rate hikes, and nearly one billion dollars in back pay, Californians have absorbed Edison’s wildfire risk. Edison is reporting sharply higher profits, while survivors — who are also ratepayers — are bearing the cost of this fire in real time.”

Gabriela Ornelas, spokeswoman for SoCal Edison, told City News Service that the company is committed to helping the Altadena community recover.

“We understand people and businesses impacted by the Eaton Fire are eager to move forward. Our Wildfire Recovery Compensation Plan offers a way to help them do that,” Ornelas said.

“The program provides fair resolution, fast payments and it can be used for interim housing. We do encourage people to submit a claim, reach out for any information, and they are also welcome to set up a meeting with our team to get their questions answered, if they have any,” Ornelas added.

But fire survivors argue the program isn’t enough and prevents impacted individuals and families from pursuing legal claims.

Two analyses conducted by survivor groups claimed that SoCal Edison’s program is not designed to keep families housed or move recovery forward. The reviews concluded that the plan excludes renters, smoke-damaged households and other vulnerable families, relies on pre-fire assumptions that do not reflect a post-fire reality, and provides housing assistance far below current market rents.

“The plan requires families to permanently waive their legal rights in order to access housing assistance,” Andrew Wessels, strategy director for Eaton Fire Survivors Network, said in a statement. “That is not a path to recovery.”

Ornelas noted that the final version of the utility’s program increased rental calculations by 17% for its monthly fair rental value — the amount a home could reasonably be rented for each month, if someone else was living in it. If a property was damaged or destroyed, this number helps determine how much a claimant will be paid for the loss of use of the property.

SoCal Edison’s program provides 42 months of housing support, covering individuals who lost their single-family homes. A settlement agreement is required to participate in the program. Once a claim is filed, the company could provide payment within 120 days.

Fire survivors say they are being priced out of their once affordable community. After the fire, which reduced local housing supply, families and other survivors faced rents that doubled or tripled.

Department of Angeles research showed that nearly a year after the fire, most survivors remain in temporary or unstable housing because they cannot afford post-fire rents. More than one in three families are expected to be forced to move again within months as remaining housing funds run out.

“When my rental burned, I lost everything, including $80,000 in plumbing tools and my entire livelihood,” Gabriel Gonzalez, an Eaton Fire survivor and owner of American Pipe Dream Plumbing Company, said in a statement. “I’ve been living in my car since the fire. Keeping people housed while claims move forward is what makes recovery possible.”

State Sen. Sasha Renee Perez, D-Pasadena, joined fire survivors for their announcement, backing their demand that housing relief should be separated from compensation.

“There should be no strings attached to providing much-needed emergency housing to Eaton Fire survivors who are still displaced and suffering trauma,” Renee Perez said in a statement. “Emergency housing relief must be kept entirely separate from any settlement process. While SCE’s program includes funds for temporary housing, it’s limited and inadequate. Survivors should never be forced to choose between having a safe place to live and preserving their legal rights.”

The Eaton Fire erupted on Jan. 7, 2025, driven by historically powerful winds. It killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 buildings, including some 6,000 homes. While the exact cause of the fire has not been determined, SoCal Edison is facing several lawsuits, with plaintiffs alleging that the fire began in the foothills above Altadena, where the company’s equipment is located.

The post Wildfire Survivors Demand SoCal Edison Provide Housing Relief appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

After talking to residents about the plan it released in July, Edison said it decided to expand the area of homes that are eligible for compensation for smoke damage.

“Expanding the eligibility area is one of the most significant updates made as a result of feedback,” said Pedro Pizarro, the chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company. “The number of qualified properties nearly doubled for those with damage from smoke, soot or ash.”

The utility also increased the amount of compensation it is offering for some victims. For example, each child in a family that lost its home will be eligible to receive $75,000 for pain and suffering, up from $50,000 in the initial plan.

To receive payments under the utility’s Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program, families must agree to drop any lawsuits they filed against the utility for the Jan. 7 fire.

The program also is open to businesses that lost revenues and renters who lost property. And it covers those who suffered physical injuries or had family members who died.

Edison is launching the victim compensation program even though government fire investigators have not released their report on the cause of the fire. The inferno swept through Altadena, destroying 9,400 homes and other structures and killing 19 people.

Videos captured the fire igniting under a century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon that Edison had not used since 1971, and Pizarro has said a leading theory is that the line somehow re-energized and ignited the blaze. Edison said in a federal securities filing this week that “absent additional evidence, SCE believes that it is likely that its equipment could be found to have been associated with the ignition.”

In documents detailing its final compensation plan, the utility included the example of a family of four with a 1,500-square-foot home that was destroyed. The family would receive $900,000 to rebuild, $360,000 for personal property, $140,000 for loss of use and $380,000 for pain and suffering. It also would receive a $200,000 “direct claim premium” for agreeing to settle outside of court.

That total of $1,980,000 is then reduced by the family’s $1 million of insurance coverage, according to the company’s example.

On Thursday, state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena) sent a letter to Edison saying she was concerned about how the utility was requiring victims to waive their future legal rights in order to get compensation. And she called on Edison to provide immediate housing assistance to fire victims.

“Having acknowledged its potential role in starting the Eaton Fire, Edison must do everything within its power to prioritize the needs of survivors and make this commitment a core part of its corporate duty,” she wrote to Pizarro. “This means ensuring fire victims can recover and rebuild their lives with the support they are owed.”

Edison expects to be reimbursed for most or all of the payments it makes to victims by a $21-billion state wildfire fund that Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers created in 2019 to shield utilities from bankruptcy. Administrators of the wildfire fund told members of the state Catastrophe Response Council this week that they expect Eaton fire claims “to be in the tens of billions of dollars.”

In September, Newsom signed a bill that will bolster the money available by another $18 billion for future wildfires. Under that bill, Edison is allowed to raise electric rates for any Eaton fire costs that exceed the original $21-billion fund.

Some Eaton fire survivors told the council, which oversees the wildfire fund, that Edison’s program fails to fully cover damages suffered by victims. Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, recently sent the council a report detailing where her group found shortfalls. For example, Chen said, Edison is deducting a homeowner’s full insurance coverage from the compensation amounts even if the insurer has reimbursed the family for only part of that amount.

“Nine months after Edison’s negligence shattered our lives, the toll is clear,” the group’s report states. “Many have drained retirement savings, maxed out credit cards, or watched marriages and health deteriorate under the strain. “

“You destroyed our homes, lives and community,” the report says of Edison. “Fix what you broke. “

Chen’s group joined with Perez in calling for Edison to provide emergency housing assistance for victims.

Edison said its program is designed “to help the community recover and rebuild faster.” The utility said a report by RAND, the non-profit research group it hired to assess the compensation plan, determined the payment amounts “used modern statistical methods and in our judgment were thoughtfully done and well executed.”

Edison said victims can start filing for claims now and that it expects to get back to them with an offer within 90 days.

The post Edison increases compensation for Eaton fire victims, but some say it’s not enough appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Southern California Edison — the utility that owns the decommissioned power line that may have started the fire — made a sweeping offer on Wednesday to pay families affected by the blaze hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in compensation.

The Eaton fire ravaged Altadena, an idyllic foothill community northeast of downtown Los Angeles, killing 19 people, destroying thousands of homes and damaging thousands more. Although state fire investigators have not officially determined the cause, evidence suggests that the utility’s equipment played a key role.

The company on Wednesday launched its program to compensate victims for rebuilding costs, lost rental income, physical injuries and other economic damages. Altadena residents are also eligible for other payouts for “non-economic losses,” such as pain and suffering and emotional distress, depending on their circumstances. Each adult resident of a house that burned down, for instance, is eligible to receive $115,000 and each child is eligible for $75,000. A surviving spouse of someone who died in the fire is eligible for $2 million.

Survivors have until Nov. 30, 2026, to decide whether to take the utility up on its offer — and forfeit the right to sue — or to hold out for a legal settlement that could be larger but take years to be resolved.

It is a calculation that more Californians could face in the future, as climate change causes utility-sparked wildfires to burn hotter and more quickly out of control.

For each family, the equation is different.

“There have been a lot of people, like lawyers, who are like, ‘I’m going to help you take Edison for everything you can get, like, let’s drag them through the mud,’” said Lauren Randolph, 40, whose home was destroyed in the blaze. “But there’s just so many things to consider, once this is in its final form: Do we take this to get the money sooner? Or do we wait to try to get more? But how much more, in theory, would we actually get, and is that actually meaningful and worth it?”

Ms. Randolph and her husband bought their house in West Altadena in 2018, while she was pregnant with her older daughter, and they poured some $150,000 and countless hours into renovating it.

Then, on the evening of Jan. 7, they debated for hours whether to leave, although they hadn’t been ordered to evacuate.

They eventually went to Ms. Randolph’s mother’s house. When the couple returned, only their side gate was left standing. They only recognized it because they had painted it in rainbow colors for their daughter’s fifth birthday.

For months, whether to take the utility’s money has been a subject of conversation at coffee shops, in WhatsApp groups and among lawyers and their clients.

Southern California Edison leaders announced in July that they were planning a program to compensate wildfire survivors. They said they had enlisted the help of Kenneth R. Feinberg and Camille S. Biros, who were known for designing compensation programs for people directly affected by the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. This is, Ms. Biros said later, their first time working on a program for survivors of a wildfire.

Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s biggest utility, has paid out billions through similar settlements. A fund to compensate victims of wildfires sparked by its equipment, including the 2018 Camp fire, has paid out $13.7 billion so far, according to a website that tracks its progress.

No compensation fund has been set up for the January Palisades fire, which investigators have not linked to any utility.

In late September, Southern California Edison company hosted community meetings online and in Altadena to gather feedback on its plans. On a Monday night, fire survivors who had been scattered across the region packed into a park gymnasium to hear from company representatives and voice their concerns. Many older survivors brought their adult children or other relatives.

Under the plan, victims would be paid according to the level of damage their home had sustained: destroyed, partially destroyed or damaged by smoke. Survivors could pick from two options: A fast pay option, where they would receive an offer within 90 days of submitting their claim, but with a less detailed review, or a slower option, where they would have to wait for a deeper examination of their losses that could take up to nine months. A fast pay offer would not be reduced by insurance claims, but a detailed review offer would be offset by insurance coverage. Every offer for someone represented by a lawyer would include an extra 10 percent to help cover attorney’s fees.

Utility officials emphasized that the program was voluntary: Survivors could file claims and assess their offer, with no obligation to take it.

People attending the meeting peppered company representatives with questions, which were transcribed in marker on giant sheets of paper: What about a collection of sports memorabilia that was lost? Would West Altadena residents be paid more because of the lack of warning about the fire? What if family members disagreed about whether they wanted to accept the settlement or continue with a lawsuit? The company didn’t have immediate answers.

Some of the survivors said later that they were wary about giving too many details of their cases to the utility; their lawyers had warned them that any information they provided at the meetings could be used against them.

On Wednesday, Southern California Edison released the final details of the program and opened the claims process.

Pedro J. Pizarro, the president and chief executive of Southern California Edison’s parent company, Edison International, said that changes to the initial proposal had been made in response to feedback, including expanding the number of people who could apply for the program and eliminating some documentation requirements.

The total number of eligible parties, which includes households and businesses, is about 18,000, he said.

Company executives have said that the compensation program is not an admission of guilt, and they have not been held liable in court for the fire.

Nevertheless, Mr. Pizarro said that the company has recognized there is “concerning circumstantial evidence” that its equipment sparked the fire, and that “there isn’t another probable cause.” He has warned investors that the company is likely to face losses as a result. Already, the utility has been sued many times over the fire.

“Every month that goes by, you might have more displacement for people who have been impacted, more escalation in construction costs — it just keeps adding up for the victims, as well as for the company,” he said. “For most victims, a standardized program can lead to a fair outcome in very short order, and it really is about having a sense of urgency to get that cash flowing into the community.”

Still, some lawyers and advocates for survivors said that they saw the program as a disingenuous attempt by Southern California Edison to reduce its liability. They said the company would rather boost profits for its executives and shareholders than spend money to mitigate the risk of its equipment starting fires in the first place.

And the size of the compensation offers has signaled to some lawyers that the company knows it could be forced to pay much more in court.

“In almost every case, it’s pennies on the dollar of what we likely — though there’s not certainty — we’ll be able to recover otherwise,” said Kipp Mueller, a lawyer who is representing fire victims.

Angela Giacchetti, one of Mr. Mueller’s clients, initially believed her family had been lucky: Their house was one of few in their neighborhood that was left standing after the Eaton fire roared through.

But she said she quickly learned that dealing with smoke damage is its own nightmare. The roof of the house, built in the 1940s, needed to be replaced. Initial attempts to clean the house left behind a lingering stench. Ms. Giacchetti, 37, her husband and her now 18-month-old son have moved every few weeks or months, as insurance payments have slowed.

She said the cost of fixing her home has been multiple times what Southern California Edison would likely offer her through the program. And the fact that the non-economic damage payments for children were less than for adults was an insult, she said.

“It was like a second grief,” she said. “You could see the dollar amounts these corporations put on our health and well-being.”

Zella Knight, whose family left Mississippi for West Altadena in the Jim Crow era, when she was a young child, said she feared that no amount of compensation would preserve a once thriving Black community whose vulnerable elders were displaced by the fire. Many of those people, she said, may not be able to afford to wait for a possible larger payout down the line, unlike wealthier recent arrivals.

Ms. Knight, 62, said her intellectually disabled brother had continued living in their childhood home, after their parents died. The house was destroyed in the fire, disrupting his routines and care. He died in August. Now, she and her other siblings are deciding whether to sell the property.

“We have lost our extended family, we’ve lost our comfort zones, we’ve lost those mechanisms that build upon generational wealth,” she said. “Nothing can really compensate for that.”

But, she said, the settlements could be a start.

The post L.A. Fire Victims Face a Choice: Take a Settlement or Hold Out for More appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The California Public Utilities Commission voted on the increase during its meeting Thursday. The approval means Edison customers who use about 500 kilowatt hours each month would see a 9.1% increase in their bill.

The California Public Utilities Commission voted on the increase during its meeting Thursday. The approval means Edison customers who use about 500 kilowatt hours each month — the average customer — would see a 9.1% increase in their bill.

The monthly bill for a customer using 500 kilowatt hours would increase from $171 to about $186.56 starting on Oct. 1.

That increase is only slightly lower than the 10% increase that Edison was requesting.

The increase comes as SoCal Edison continues to face lawsuits from victims of the Los Angeles fires earlier this year. SoCal Edison is also facing a lawsuit from the federal government, which has said the utility company’s negligence is to blame for the Eaton and Fairview fires.

The funds from the increase, according to the California Public Utilities Commission, are expected to go toward investing in infrastructure that is expected to reduce wildfire reductions, including undergrounding power lines in high-risk areas.

But customers believed the increase should be denied, saying that the utility company has failed to adequately prevent wildfires despite already charging more for tree trimming and equipment upgrades, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Southern California Edison reported record profits of $1.69 billion in 2024, a 9.8% increase from 2023, Fox26 reported.

“This is the very definition of unreliable service,” one customer wrote, according to the Los Angeles Times. ”We are now being asked to pay more per unit for a lower quality good.”

The post Electric Bills To Spike In Southern California: Utility Rate Hike Approved appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Investigations into the cause of the fire are ongoing and have not concluded that Edison’s equipment sparked the blaze, Edison International Chief Executive Pedro Pizarro said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call.

But Edison’s probe into the start of the fire has not revealed any other possible sources of ignition, Pizarro added.

“Absent additional evidence” and “in light of pending litigation, it is probable that Edison International and Southern California Edison will incur material losses in connection with the Eaton fire,” Pizarro said.

Edison has previously acknowledged that it could be responsible for the blaze and said earlier this month that a dormant power line might have been the cause.

But Tuesday’s comments are the clearest signal to date that the company is likely to sustain substantial losses from the devastating wildfire.

“It’s still very early days here and the liability is simply not estimable today,” Pizarro said. “I’m not sure when it may become estimable.”

The Eaton fire killed 18 people and destroyed thousands of homes and other structures. Early estimates put the cost of damages at $10 billion, but experts said that number would grow. The total estimated economic loss caused by the January wildfires has surpassed $250 billion.

Southern California Edison, based in Rosemead, is an investor-owned public utility that provides electricity to about 15 million people across a 50,000-square-mile area in Southern California. Along with the utility, which is one of the largest in the country, Edison International also owns an energy advisory company, Trio.

In all, Edison International employs more than 14,000 people and had a valuation of around $30 billion before January’s wildfires. The company’s valuation closed Tuesday at $22.6 billion.

If Edison has to cover the damages caused by the Eaton fire, the utility will be partially protected by an emergency fund that state lawmakers created in 2019 in the wake of earlier wildfires. The fund is designed to protect utility companies from bankruptcy in the event the utility is found responsible for a wildfire and has to make a large payout.

Video of flames at the base of an Edison transmission tower in Eaton Canyon the night the fire began raised suspicions that the utility’s equipment was at fault.

“Unlike when we were dealing with TKM and Woolsey, we have the wildfire fund that we will be accessing,” Edison International Chief Financial Officer Maria Rigatti said on Tuesday, referring to previous wildfires tied to Edison’s equipment.

The emergency fund is supposed to cover up to $21 billion in damages on behalf of a utility company, but had only amassed $14.7 billion as of December 2024.

Under state law, a utility does not have to reimburse the wildfire fund after using it to cover damages if a review finds it acted prudently to prevent a fire, such as by shutting down power to transmission lines amid high winds. But if Edison is found to have been imprudent, it will have to pay back $4 billion to the fund.

“Based on everything we know today and the information that we’ve reviewed, we believe that Southern California Edison will make a good-faith showing that it was prudent,” Rigatti said.

On Tuesday, Edison International reported first-quarter net income of $1.4 billion and earnings per share of $1.37, up from $1.13 a year ago.

Shares closed at $58.73 on Tuesday, about half a percent higher and down 26% so far this year.

The post Southern California Edison likely to incur ‘material losses’ related to Eaton fire, executive says appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The fire, which burned in Hemet, scorched a staggering 28,098 acres, killed two people and injured three others. The fire destroyed 36 structures, including 22 single-family homes. The fire also damaged eight structures, including five homes.

The wildfire’s containment and extinguishment cost an estimated $38,850,000. Meanwhile, the blaze caused at least $1,206,644 in property damage to utility facilities, according to the complaint filed by the commission.

The utility is being fined for four violations that CPUC reported. Among the violations in the citation was that SCE failed to maintain the clearance of their electrical wires from hitting other power lines.

It was found that the Fairview Fire was likely triggered by a sagging electrical wire that ignited vegetation below.

During the Fairview Fire investigation, the commission’s Safety and Enforcement Division observed two “scorch marks” on the phase 1B conductor and the Frontier Communications messenger cable, “consistent with electrical arc damage,” the complaint states.

CalFire’s own investigation also confirmed that SCE’s conductor and the Frontier Communications messenger cable had a clearance of “zero,” meaning they collided at some point.

Failure to maintain that clearance is a violation of the utilities code. A fourth violation mandates that conductors operating up to 22,500 volts must maintain a vertical above-ground clearance of 17 feet.

The citation, issued on March 21, also accuses SCE of failing to respond to the commission’s investigation into the cause of the blaze. The citation details that SCE was “consistently late” and delayed responding to that investigation.

The utility giant’s response to the investigation “hindered and delayed SED’s ability to investigate the Fairview Fire incident within a reasonable timeframe.”

During the investigation, the citation alleges that SCE treated its first deadline as “unilaterally negotiable and with a lack of seriousness.”

The utility “did not provide SED with timely responses,” which violates a public utilities code.

CPUC said they asked SCE 55 questions in December 2022, which were due by Jan. 26, 2023.

“SCE failed to respond to DR-01 on the due date and did not seek an extension from SED. Instead, SCE informed SED that it had decided to extend the deadline to respond to DR-01 to January 20, 2023, February 10, 2023, and February 24, 2023, and that it would be providing the responses on a piecemeal basis,” according to the citation.

Also, according to CPUC, SCE missed its “self-granted” extension. Ultimately, the utility only responded to five out of 55 questions that it was required to answer.

After a series of SCE requests for more extensions, SED finally told SCE that April 28, 2023, would be the final deadline to answer the remaining questions.

On May 24, 2023, SED issued its Notice of Inclusion of Violations, and said that the delays were “unacceptable.”

On July 10, the utility responded to that notice and “claimed that the delay…was due in part to a family emergency faced by an SCE employee who worked on the investigation,” the complaint reads.

“However, SED’s position is that SCE’s mismanagement of its internal resources created the delay and hindered SED’s investigation,” the citation continues.

This isn’t the first time the Southland utility has faced scrutiny and lawsuits over devastating wildfires. More recently, the utility is being sued for igniting the Eaton Fire, which leveled entire neighborhoods in Altadena at the start of the year.

The post SoCal Edison Fined $2.2M Fine For RivCo’s Deadly Fairview Fire appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Satyasai’s Pacific Gas and Electric bill jumped by about $100 compared to the same month last year. Like many of PG&E’s 5.5 million customers, she’s having to rescript her monthly budget around these rising costs. 

“Everyone is getting squeezed,” Satyasai said. 

Propelled in large part by PG&E, which hiked residential electricity rates by 20% for about 16 million Californians in January, the state high electricity prices are second only to Hawaii, which is always an expensive outlier because of the costs of shipping oil to the far-flung archipelago.

A pack of New England states have historically had some of the nation’s highest electricity prices (the federal government doesn’t track rates but rather calculates prices using customer counts, sales and revenue data) due to factors like a shortage in natural gas pipeline capacity plus the region’s reliance on costly fossil fuels to generate electricity. 

But California has joined them in the last ten years, leapfrogging with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire to periodically hold the title as the most expensive state for electricity usage in the lower 48. (Even though Californians pay a high amount for each unit of electricity, their total bills tend to be lower than other states in the Northeast and South due to the West Coast’s relatively temperate climate.)

East Coast residents are paying higher prices during cold winter months with Californians paying higher electricity prices for a brief period nearly every summer since 2014, likely when people must cool their homes during heatwaves. 

It is unusual for Californians to pay higher prices than the East Coast in the depth of winter. This year alone, typical Northern and Central California households (which use about 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity each month) will pay over $400 more annually on their PG&E bill.  

PG&E currently charges the most for electricity among California’s three investor-owned utilities with an average residential rate of $0.397 per kilowatt hour. The company’s residential electricity rates have risen more dramatically than the other utilities, jumping 128% over the last decade. 

San Diego Gas and Electric’s average residential electricity rate is $0.383 per kilowatt hour and Southern California Edison’s rate is $0.338. 

PG&E has vowed to keep future rate increases between 2% and 4% annually, and said January’s dramatic hike was partly due to the slow pace of state approvals that compressed two years of rate hikes into one. 

PG&E chief executive officer Patti Poppe last week told investors during a quarterly earnings call that the company is taking dramatic steps to increase efficiency and lower costs. In an interview with the Chronicle, Poppe said the focus on lowering operational costs is new for the company and one that she hopes will show up in lower bills in the future. 

“The work we’re doing is really necessary,” Poppe said. 

Robert McCullough, an Oregon-based energy consultant who has studied California’s utility markets, said California’s historically high electricity prices can in part be tied to complicated factors like the state’s deregulation of the energy industry in the 1990s. 

But McCullough blamed January’s sticker shock hitting PG&E customers this year on the company’s deferred maintenance of its aging electric grid.

The company attributes about 85% of January’s rate increase to covering the costs to modernize, upgrade and strengthen its aging electric and natural gas infrastructure at a time when climate change has made the state increasingly vulnerable to storms and wildfires. 

“Pacific Gas and Electric fell behind on its maintenance and even without global warming that would have been a big bill,” McCullough said. 

And PG&E’s rates are set to be eclipsed by San Diego Gas and Electric before the end of 2024. The San Diego utility has temporarily dropped rates to compensate customers after previously  charging too much, according to the Public Advocate’s Office of the California Public Utilities Commission. 

Californians’ utility bills could also be impacted by a controversial proposed monthly fixed charge of about $24. 

The post ‘Everyone is getting squeezed’: California electricity prices now second-highest in U.S. appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.