Tag Archives: Southern California Edison
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 ›
First Audit In 20 Years Finds A Lot Wrong With The Agency That Regulates Your Utilities
by Jeff MCDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune
The General Services review is supposed to be conducted every three years, but the audit released Wednesday is the first such examination in more than 20 years. Officials did not explain why General Services failed to conduct legally required audits before. 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 ›
Criminal Probe Focuses On San Onofre Response
by Jeff McDonald and Ricky Young, San Diego Union-Tribune
“The facts indicate that [Michael Peevey, former President of the California Public Utilities Commission,] conspired to obstruct justice by illegally engaging in ex parte communications, concealed ex parte communications, and inappropriately interfered with the settlement process on behalf of California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA,” [according to the sworn affidavit.] “Peevey executed this plan through back channel communications and exertion of pressure, in violation of CPUC ex parte rules, and in obstruction of the due administration of laws.” Read More ›
Mercury News editorial: Governor’s PUC Emails Should Be Public
by The Editorial Board, San Jose Mercury News
Brown stood by former PUC President Michael Peevey long after Peevey’s grossly inappropriate relationship with PG&E became clear. Under Peevey’s watch, the PUC let PG&E take money that was approved for pipeline safety and use it instead for executive compensation before the deadly 2010 San Bruno explosion. The governor also knew Peevey inappropriately engaged in secret talks with Southern California Edison, the majority owner of the San Onofre power plant in San Diego County. But the real surprise was this fall, when he vetoed the six-bill PUC transparency package that was passed unanimously by the Assembly and Senate. Read More ›
Edison Fined $16.7 Million For ‘Secret’ San Onofre Chats
by Teri Sforza, Orange County Register
“The CPUC could have thrown the book at Edison, with maximum penalties of $41.75 million, which would have sent a much stronger message than a paltry $16.74 million,” said Mindy Spatt, spokeswoman for The Utility Reform Network, a consumer group that has pulled out of the San Onofre settlement agreement. “Edison may be left with the impression that the CPUC doesn’t take their violations of the ex-parte rules all that seriously. This money will go to the state general fund, not customers, who would be best served by the commission reopening the case and returning more money to customers,” Spatt said. Read More ›
From Warsaw To SF, The Roots Of Edison’s Historic Fine
by Chuck McFadden, Capitol Weekly
[The CPUC] levied the unprecedented fine as punishment for failing to disclose a series of meetings and emails, and for providing misleading testimony pertaining to the costs of shutting down the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Southern California Edison owns 70 percent of the station. … Left hanging was the question of whether the commission would revisit a previously approved settlement deal that has ratepayers coughing up to 70 percent of the $4.7 billion cost of shutting down San Onofre. … The $16.7 million fine is the largest ever imposed on a utility for these specific violations. 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 ›