Tag Archives: San Diego Gas & Electric
Edison Calls Settlement That Left Consumers On Hook For $3.3 Billion Reasonable
by Ivan Penn, Los Angeles Times
Consumer advocates filed their own arguments Thursday in favor of reconsidering the settlement. They argue that Edison should be held responsible for the premature closure of San Onofre in June 2013 after faulty replacement steam generators were installed at the plant. Read More ›
State Regulators Reopen Case On San Onofre Nuclear Plant
by Ivan Penn, Los Angeles Times
The ruling follows a $16.7-million fine in December [against Southern California Edison] … imposed because of Edison’s failure to report back-channel communication between Edison representatives and commission representatives. … The closure led to a settlement agreement approved by the utilities commission. Under the deal, the plant’s owners — Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. — would pay $1.4 billion in reactor closing costs; their customers were left on the hook for an additional $3.3 billion. Read More ›
State Legislators Call For Drastic Overhaul Of California’s Utility Regulator
by Melanie Mason and Jeff McDonald, Los Angeles Times
Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) said his measure would decentralize the California Public Utilities Commission’s oversight of myriad utilities, including electricity, railroad safety and ride-sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft. … Gatto, chairman of the Assembly’s utilities committee, would give the Legislature two years to divvy up the functions of the commission among other agencies, which Gatto said would result in a more logical assignment of responsibilities. Read More ›
Order Could Lead To Release Of E-Mails Between Brown’s Office, CPUC
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
The state Public Utilities Commission must justify its refusal to release e-mails that could reveal a behind-the-scenes role for Gov. Jerry Brown in a multibillion-dollar deal with two utilities that shut down a Southern California nuclear power plant, a San Francisco judge ruled Monday. … A lawyer challenging the $3.3 billion charge to the utilities’ customers is seeking the e-mails as potential evidence of intervention in the shutdown negotiations by the governor’s office and top commission officials. The state attorney general’s office is also seeking the e-mails as part of its corruption probe of the agency. Read More ›
SB 215 Sustains Drive For CPUC Reforms Originally Sought In SB 660
1/27/2015 Update: The Senate approved SB 215 (Leno) in a 37-0 vote yesterday (with no votes recorded for Senators Bates, Liu and Wolk). The bill awaits committee action in the Assembly. SB 215 incorporates CPUC reforms CFC had sought in SB 660 (Leno), which had passed unanimously in both the Assembly … Read More ›
PUC Needs A Clean Break With Peevey Era
by The Editorial Board, San Diego Union-Tribune
If PUC President Michael Picker wants to save his agency from a further erosion of its tattered reputation … [he] should demand that the PUC stop withholding documents from the media and stop resisting cooperation with criminal investigators. … Then the PUC president should announce he no longer supports the PUC’s November 2014 vote to assign 70 percent of the cost of the San Onofre shutdown — $3.3 billion — to the utilities’ ratepayers. The deal is an awful one for the utilities’ millions of customers. Read More ›
Judge: Regulator Should Release Brown E-Mails On Nuclear Shutdown
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
The 65 e-mails that [Gov. Jerry Brown and CPUC officials] either sent or received date from 2013 and 2014. “It appears from the record that CPUC and officials from the governor’s office, including the governor himself, were involved in the discussions at the CPUC regarding the San Onofre” [nuclear plant shutdown, attorney Maria Severson told San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith]. “The interest of public disclosure as to who and what was behind the decision to make utility customers pay over $3.3 billion for the errors of Edison is of vital importance.” Read More ›
CPUC Reform Veto Vexes Brown Backers
by Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune
Richard Holober, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, has praised Brown in the past for action on privacy, food safety, credit reports and residential care facilities for the elderly. Holober is not happy with the vetoes of CPUC bills. “Until we saw the vetoes, we were keeping our fingers crossed that he would make the Governor’s Office part of the solution,” Holober said. “Now we are really scratching our heads. The loss of public trust, the scandalous collusion is troubling.” Read More ›
Utilities Spend Lots Of Public’s Money To Influence State Politics
by Teri Sforza, The Orange County Register
“Your No. 1 example, PG&E, is textbook!” [said Chapman University political science professor Mark Chapin Johnson.] “They answer to the state through the PUC, not their shareholders. … Whenever PG&E wishes to contribute vast sums of ratepayers’ monthly payments to the political process, all PG&E needs do is gain permission to raise rates with the PUC to cover such contributions. Public shareholders or ratepayers have no say in the process. Is this a great system or what? Talk about incestuous!” Read More ›
San Diego U-T Editorial: Gov. Brown And The PUC: What, Me Worry?
by The Editorial Board, San Diego Union-Tribune
This is maddening. At any point over the past year, Brown could have given guidance to lawmakers on how to structure PUC fixes that he thought appropriate. Instead, apparently discerning a world in which it’s cool for regulators and utilities to have a buddy-buddy relationship, the governor ended up blocking all reforms. … Despite [scandalous] revelations, the PUC has shrugged off calls to reopen negotiations on San Onofre and has done little to cooperate with investigators… [and] pretends that $850 million in already-planned PG&E infrastructure improvements are a penalty. This is the corrupt, petty culture that Jerry Brown thinks is worth preserving. Read More ›
CPUC Reform Bills On Governor’s Desk
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
SB660 implements the reforms the law firm called for and closes a loophole that allowed for secret meetings as long as they were one-sided and the commissioners did all the talking. Leno said he is hopeful that Brown will sign the bill. “We took some amendments and we stood our ground on others” in talks with the governor’s office, he said. The resulting bill was passed unanimously by both the state Senate and Assembly. “It is clearly a quality product on a very timely and important issue,” Leno said, adding that the bill would make a difference “to a commission suffering systemic problems.” Read More ›
PUC Launches PG&E Probe As Agency Fails To Comply With Search Warrant
by Ivan Penn, Los Angeles Times
Meanwhile, the commission – beset by criticism that its officials have a too-cozy relationship with the utilities they regulate – failed to respond to a search warrant for records related [to] the California attorney general’s investigation of agency operations. A court document filed Aug. 7 states that “after multiple requests, and two months after the search warrant was served on CPUC, no records have been produced.” … The attorney general is investigating secret talks between the commission and Southern California Edison, the state’s second largest investor-owned utility. Read More ›
State Consumer Advocate To Pull Out Of San Onofre Nuclear Plant Settlement
by Ivan Penn, Los Angeles Times
A multibillion-dollar settlement over the closed San Onofre nuclear power plant took another blow Monday as the state consumer advocate said that he was withdrawing from the deal and would urge regulators to reopen the case. Joe Como … said Monday that he was “very disappointed” by a judge’s ruling Aug. 5 that Edison failed to report communication with regulators about a settlement. Como added that the judge did not go far enough and wrote an opinion that still gives too much latitude for utilities to communicate with regulators outside public view. Read More ›