PG&E My Most Hated Company Has A Good Side

 

      Those of us who have lived in Argentina, Brasil, Nigeria, Peru, The Philippines, South Africa, and Zimbabwe are quite familiar with rolling blackouts and power outages. As bad as electric power delivery can be, rarely does a fatality happen because of an electric company like Eskom. When a fatality does happen, it is often an elderly person who dies from exposure to extreme heat or cold when the electric power is off.

     Here in Northern California most of us get our electric power from Pacific Gas and Electric. Over the last decade up to 200 people have died due to explosions and wildfires caused by PG and E lack of maintenance.

      Long ago, PG&E was run by engineers. A lot of money, time and effort was devoted to maintenance. Then "the finance types" took charge. They radically cut maintenance budgets to increase profits and share prices.

       One would expect that the managers responsible for all this death and destruction would be serving long prison sentences for multiple counts of manslaughter. One would have expected the State of California to step in and take over PG&E. One would have expected that the company would be broken up. Its functions would be taken over by various municipalities.

        None of this has happened. The managers responsible for all the death and destruction are comfortable with nice pension checks. The company has suffered numerous criminal convictions. It has been fined billions of dollars. They have been allowed to raise electricity rates to pay these fines. The company's shares on the NYSE are doing fine.

     As much as I despise PG&E management, my experiences with individual workers over the years have been excellent. The employees are competent, professional, and "go out of their way" to help customers.

Yesterday was one such example. A PG&E team came out to assess the storm damage to our electric lines. Elena and I got the wonderful news that no power lines were down or damaged. One thick communications line was causing a hazard to traffic on the street. They cut this line down. It did not affect internet, cable television, or telephone service. Today Comcast and AT&T come out to fix their lines.