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Earlier this year, NBC Bay Area spoke with the CEO of PG&E about how customers’ bills should be falling in 2026, but some customers may have recently received a flyer in the mail about a pending rate hike proposal for 2027.
The company will make the ask before the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) later this week, and the public will be able to weigh in.
For the last couple of years, PG&E has been on what it expects will be an expensive yearslong project to bury many of its power lines that are in wildfire prone areas. Despite that, the company says it is committed to stabilizing the costs it is passing on to residential customers.
“Our electric bills are lower today than they were in January a year ago,” PG&E spokesman Mike Gazda said. “They’re expected to go down next year. And if this proposal is approved as it was filed, bills for our customers in 2027 would be pretty flat with where they are today.”
The plan calls for rates to be hiked incrementally each year over the next four years. By 2030, rate payers using about 500 kilowatt hours per month would see their bills be about $408 more than today.
That will bring in an additional $4.4 billion for PG&E. The company says it will use that money to continue upgrading its system.
Over the summer, PG&E CEO Patti Poppe made a special effort to explain why the utility has decided to bury, or “underground” as PG&E calls it, miles and miles of power lines when some critics say it would be less expensive to simply insulate those lines.
“Insulating lines in our highest density, in our highest vegetation dense areas, which are our highest fire risk areas, leaves 35% of the risk still on the system,” Poppe said in May. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a place where I have 35% risk of a wildfire.”
Those efforts have meant PG&E customers are paying significantly more. Average yearly rates have doubled since 2022.
The public will have two opportunities this week to voice their opinions on PG&E’s proposed rate hike. The CPUC will have a public participation session Wednesday by webcast and a second one on Thursday. Rate payers who would like to sound off in person can do that Nov. 7, but that in-person meeting is in Fresno.
NBC Bay Area’s Raj Mathai sat down for an exclusive interview with PG&E CEO Patti Poppe.
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Sergio Quintana
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