Latest news with #SDG&E
Los Angeles Times
17-05-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Virginia Way underground utility district formed in South Laguna
The Laguna Beach City Council this month gave the go ahead for the formation of a new utility undergrounding project, this time upon a key stretch of roadway in South Laguna. The project will remove six utility poles and associated overhead wires along Virginia Way between 3rd Avenue and 5th Avenue, which city officials identified as a key evacuation route. Just over an hour after it was presented with a comprehensive update on the current and future plans for wildfire mitigation and fire safety on May 6, the City Council adopted a resolution to establish the district. The project will qualify for credits under the California Public Utilities Commission Rule 20A program, according to a city staff report. The CPUC states such work must be in the public interest and may eliminate a heavy concentration of overhead lines, involve a street with a high volume of traffic, or benefit a civic or public recreation area or area of unusual scenic interest. Pierre Sawaya, the city's capital program manager, said the Rule 20A program has been proposed to sunset, although the city had a balance of $857,979 in program credits from San Diego Gas & Electric. 'While the city had previously accrued credits on an annual basis, from SDG&E in this case, there are no additional credit accruals moving forward for such projects,' Sawaya added. The program credits will fund land survey, design engineering and construction work tied to cabling and the removal of utility poles, according to a staff report. An SDG&E estimate for the work came in at $854,507. 'The impacted utilities are SDG&E, the electrical provider, Cox, Frontier, and also Crown Castle has a system running through Virginia Way in that area,' Sawaya said. 'The project would provide underground connections to private properties that are currently fed overhead from the system out there today, and that connection would be provided at no cost to the property owners, which is consistent with 20A projects.' At a glance, the city's preliminary cost for the project is approximately $1.28 million, although city staff said another estimate would be provided after construction drawings were submitted. Funding for the city's portion of the project would be set aside in the capital improvement program budget. Staff projected the date of completion for the work to be August 2027. During the 27-month period, the steps will include design process, entitlements, the bidding for and completion of construction, and the removal of overhead facilities. Resident Ann Christoph called on the council to close a two-block gap between 3rd Avenue and Eagle Rock Way along Virginia Way, noting the nearby West Street underground utility district. 'It is an evacuation route, … and it doesn't seem fruitful to leave that undone when you're going to be doing this portion,' Christoph said. Sawaya said that adding blocks to the project could be possible, but it would necessitate more funding. When asked for an estimate to add the other two blocks by Councilman Bob Whalen, Sawaya responded the city could be looking at 'possibly another $2 million.' The council unanimously approved the engineer's report and the use of the Rule 20A credits, adding direction to staff to investigate possibilities to underground utility lines for the additional two blocks along Virginia Way to the north.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
City of San Diego, SDG&E complete undergrounding project in Bay Park
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — More than 200 utility poles with over three miles of overhead lines have been officially removed from a community in San Diego's Bay Park neighborhood. One of the last standing poles in the area, at the corner of Brandywine and Princeton streets, was removed Wednesday morning. It marked the completion of the city's major undergrounding project in partnership with San Diego Gas & Electric. H Barracks approved as 'safe sleeping' site The project, which lasted several months, consisted of bringing electrical, telephone and broadband service underground in an effort to reduce fire risks and give critical infrastructure the ability to endure extreme weather events. Next steps involve repaving where the utilities were brought underground and installing 56 ADA-compliant curb ramps in addition to 34 new streetlights in Bay Park. It is just one of several undergrounding projects in the works throughout San Diego's second district, as well many others city-wide. According to the city, undergrounding projects take place each year as part of its contract agreement with SDG&E. Updates on the status of undergrounding projects based by neighborhood can be found on the city's website. Certain factors such as the location of water pipes, trees and electric substations need to be taken into consideration before undergrounding work commences. The work is made possible in part by San Diegans who pay a surcharge on their SDG&E bill, which are then passed on to the city. As approved by the city council, SDG&E is then reimbursed for costs related to underground utility lines in accordance with a prioritization schedule. In February, the city council unanimously voted to create five new underground utilities districts in Barrio Logan, Jamacha-Lomita, North Clairemont and Kensington. Those areas will now be subject to a planning and design process, which usually takes between one to two years, before the infrastructure work begins. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Los Angeles Times
20-03-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Wildfires are driving up California electric bills. Lawmakers need to act
Uncomfortable truth time: The biggest reason California's electric rates are rising so fast is that utility companies are spending billions of dollars each year to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. Does that mean Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric should spend less money trimming trees, burying power lines and funding night-flying Chinook helitankers? That question is central to a raging debate in Sacramento over how to tame out-of-control utility bills. From 2019 through 2023, Edison, PG&E and SDG&E were collectively authorized to add $27 billion in wildfire-related costs to customer rates, according to the California Public Utilities Commission — 18% of their overall system costs. Those wildfire-related costs caused bills to rise between 7% and 12% for the average residential customer — $24 per month for homes served by PG&E, $18 for Edison customers and $13 for SDG&E customers. 'The cost of doing nothing is enormous,' Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine), who chairs the Utilities and Energy Committee, said this month at an oversight hearing on utility wildfire spending. Before the Eaton and Palisades fires devastated Los Angeles County, there was momentum among lawmakers to reduce bills by steering utilities away from burying electric lines — a surefire but expensive way to avoid ignitions during dry, windy conditions. Burying local distribution lines — which is much less expensive than burying larger-scale, higher-voltage transmission lines — can still cost $3 million to $5 million per mile. After the recent infernos, though, the political pendulum may swing back toward undergrounding, no matter the costs — even though there are less-expensive, highly effective fire-avoidance tools, such as 'fast-trip' technology that shuts off power lines almost instantaneously when its detects the potential for an ignition event. 'Not having any risk from ignition requires an insane amount of spending,' said Matthew Freedman, an attorney for the Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer watchdog group, in an interview. Recovering from fire can require an insane amount of spending, too. Forecasting service AccuWeather estimated the total economic losses from the Eaton and Palisades fires alone at more than $250 billion. Some losses can't be measured in dollars and cents. Twenty-nine people died in the L.A. County fires. Does that mean Edison, PG&E and SDG&E should be allowed to spend as much as possible to reduce fire risks — passing along those costs to ratepayers, often with an additional 10% profit margin for their investors? No, definitely not. But it does mean lawmakers and regulators face a terribly difficult balancing act as they scramble for solutions to the state's affordability crisis, even as they look to protect Californians from worsening wildfires. 'This is a fiendishly difficult topic to try to come up with solutions,' Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura), who chairs a subcommittee on climate change, said at this month's oversight hearing. The fiendishness stems partly from the fact that global warming — fueled by coal, oil and gas combustion — has raised the likelihood of destructive blazes, and partly from the fact that people built so many sprawling cities and towns in parts of California that were prone to wildfire even before climate change. The situation has reached crisis levels since 2017, with California suffering its nine largest fires and also its four most destructive fires on record. Several of those conflagrations — including the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people and largely destroyed the town of Paradise — were sparked by electrical infrastructure. Budget-conscious lawmakers have responded by letting Edison, PG&E and SDG&E do most of the heavy lifting of reducing wildfire risk — in effect sticking those utilities' ratepayers, rather than all taxpayers, with the bill. Since 2019, the companies have spent roughly $3 billion per year on wildfire prevention. The money goes toward tasks such as inspecting equipment, trimming trees near electrical towers and installing 'covered conductors' on power lines that make them less likely to spark if they hit a tree branch during a wind storm. Edison, PG&E and SDG&E customers benefit from that work. But in many instances, so do millions of Californians who aren't paying for it, including Los Angeles residents served by the L.A. Department of Water and Power. One astonishing example: Since 2021, Edison customers have paid more than $100 million to help fund a fleet of state-of-the-art firefighting helicopters for the L.A., Orange and Ventura County fire departments. The helitankers are capable of working through the night and dumping massive amounts of water and retardant. They're available for use no matter how a fire started — even outside of Edison's service territory. 'Even when fires escape initial attack and continue to burn out of control, the [Edison-funded fleet] has had its victories, including during the L.A. fires,' Orange County Fire Chief Brian Fennessy told lawmakers at the recent oversight hearing. The aircraft, he said, 'helped save Brentwood live on television.' Edison isn't funding the helitankers solely out of the goodness of its heart: The more the utility can do to limit the damage from fires sparked by its equipment, the less damage to its bottom line. Edison executives have been reminded of that reality as the utility confronts dozens of lawsuits over the Eaton fire, which many victims believe was ignited by one of its transmission lines. State and local officials are still investigating the cause. Regardless, Edison shouldn't have to keep paying for the helitankers indefinitely — not when the utility's millions of customers are bearing the costs, and when all Southern Californians are reaping the benefits. And consider this: Even as Edison, PG&E and SDG&E spend $3 billion per year on fire prevention, state taxpayers as a whole typically spend just a few hundred million dollars per year, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office. The burden of preventing fires is falling disproportionately on Edison, PG&E and SDG&E ratepayers. That's just not fair. Even if you don't live in an area that's at high risk of fire, you're still probably breathing wind-borne smoke that's terrible for your lungs and heart. You're still dealing with the consequences of heat-trapping carbon pollution unleashed by burning forests, such as deadlier heat waves and more intense droughts. And even if state officials want some Californians to pay more for fire prevention, electric rates are a terrible way to divvy up the costs. High utility bills disproportionately burden low-income and middle-class families, eating up a bigger chunk of their monthly budgets. Rising rates have hurt those households most of all. The results are clear in the data: Nearly one in five Edison, PG&E and SDG&E customers are behind on their bills, according to the Public Utilities Commission. That's more than 2.2 million customers, owing $769 on average. The most straightforward solution would be for lawmakers to stop letting utilities do so much wildfire prevention and start paying for more of those projects out of the state budget. That way, the burden would fall on all Golden State taxpayers, not just Edison, PG&E and SDG&E customers — a much more equitable strategy, especially given California's progressive income tax system, which requires higher earners to pay more. Mohit Chhabra, a senior analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, supports that approach. In a recent report, he encouraged state officials to find funding sources other than electric rates for important programs — not only wildfire prevention, but also energy efficiency incentives and low-income utility bill discounts. 'Of course, it's easier said than done,' Chhabra acknowledged in an interview. Indeed, despite an initial $322-billion budget proposal from Gov. Gavin Newsom for next year, the governor and lawmakers face a giant juggling act of competing priorities. And unfortunately, climate rarely seems to rank high on the list, despite its importance to voters — and the existential threat posed by rising temperatures. That dynamic was on display at the recent oversight hearing, as several lawmakers seemed hesitant to commit to spending more on wildfire prevention. At one point, Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo) asked a PG&E executive, 'Is there a way we can give some relief for ratepayers without turning to the taxpayers?' Bennett, too, said he was 'not convinced that we've made a good case to change things away from the ratepayer doing it.' He expressed encouragement that PG&E has said its rates should stabilize this year, and suggested that perhaps the skyrocketing electric rates of the last few years won't continue. 'I hope we don't have a knee-jerk — which is oftentimes what happens in the democratic process — a knee-jerk reaction to one problem, and then create another problem because we're trying to fight that last thing,' he said. If you ask me, that's wishful thinking. Maybe the last few years were as bad as it's going to get, with residential rates increasing between 48% and 67% for PG&E, SDG&E and Edison customers from 2019 through 2023. But it's hard to imagine this problem resolving itself. Not with global warming speeding up. Not with more than 150,000 miles of overhead wires crisscrossing a state home to tens of millions of fire-prone acres — and countless communities spread across those acres. No, lawmakers and Newsom will have to own this one. Hard decisions lie ahead. The problem, as Stanford University energy and climate scholar Michael Wara sees it, is that California 'wants to spend as little money on wildfires as possible' — when in truth taxpayers are on the hook no matter what. When I talked with Wara, he had just finished touring the Eaton fire burn zone in Altadena — a gut-wrenching experience. He listed a few of the ways Californians will be paying for the devastation for many years, including rebuilding costs, higher insurance premiums, healthcare for smoke inhalation, taxes that fund Cal Fire and more. Some lawmakers may not want to burden taxpayers with more spending. But taxpayers are already burdened by the high cost of wildfires. Edison, PG&E and SDG&E ratepayers bear the additional cost of wildfire prevention. 'It's the same people spending the money,' Wara said. 'Taxpayers, ratepayers, insurance premium payers.' The unavoidable reality is that wildfires are expensive, especially in an era of climate crisis. California will need to keep spending huge sums to lower the risk of ignitions, and to prepare for the fires that inevitably do ignite. The politically difficult questions are who pays, how much they pay and what exactly they're paying for. Is burying more power lines the answer? Or are there lower-cost solutions? What if those solutions involve blackouts? It's time for lawmakers to grapple with those questions. I'll have a few suggestions in next Thursday's column. This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here. For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @ on Bluesky.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Yahoo
National City police SUV crashes into BMW, electrical box and building
NATIONAL CITY, Calif. (FOX 5/KUSI) — A National City police officer was involved in a traffic collision Thursday morning, authorities confirmed. The incident occurred shortly after 5 a.m. in the 300 block of National City Boulevard when a pedestrian reportedly ran in the officer's path. After swerving to avoid the pedestrian, the patrol vehicle hit a parked BMW and an electrical box. The vehicle then collided with a building. Sgt. Paul Hernandez told FOX 5/KUSI that the officer suffered only minor injuries. No one else was reported injured from this incident. SDG&E was called to the scene due to some live wires from the impacted electrical box, Sgt. Hernandez confirmed. Due to this, traffic and pedestrian travel in the area will be temporarily impacted. Northbound National City Boulevard is closed at 4th 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Los Angeles Times
06-03-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Column: California's rooftop solar infighting is a colossal waste of time
California can't seem to decide whether it wants to maintain its status as the nation's rooftop solar leader. Two years after Gov. Gavin Newsom's appointees slashed incentive payments for newly installed solar systems, there's a chance they'll go further, reducing energy credits for utility customers who installed solar panels before the recent changes. That would mean higher energy bills for many of the state's 2 million solar-powered homes and businesses — and less confidence in a technology crucial to confronting the climate crisis. Strange as this may sound, California solar installers have been fighting such attacks for more than a decade. The short version: Investor-owned utilities Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric claim a solar incentive program called net metering has fueled higher electric rates for everyone. Every dollar the utilities pay for rooftop solar power, they say, is a dollar they end up charging other customers to maintain their poles and wires — poles and wires that serve everyone, solar-powered homes included. As more Californians have installed solar, the utilities say, the 'cost shift' has grown, forcing nonsolar customers, who tend to have lower incomes, to pay higher electric rates to subsidize their solar-powered neighbors. Solar installers and many environmental activists are far from convinced. They believe utility executives invented or exaggerated the cost shift narrative to protect their monopoly business model. So who's right? If you ask me, everybody and nobody. The fact is, California needs a lot more solar power. Climate change is accelerating: 2024 was Earth's hottest year on record by a big margin, and scientists say high temperatures and climate-fueled dryness worsened the recent fires in Los Angeles County. Meanwhile, California still generates roughly 40% of its electricity from fossil fuels. So it makes me crazy to reread stories I wrote 10 years ago about rooftop solar policy and realize hardly anything has changed. The same people are having the same arguments. Only now, they're angrier and more stubborn. The latest iteration of the solar squabble has been fueled by California's wildly escalating electricity prices. As the state Legislative Analyst's Office reported earlier this year, California's residential electric rates rose by 47% from 2019 through 2023. The increases were especially large for customers of Edison, PG&E and SDG&E. If it were just the utilities blaming rooftop solar, I'd be skeptical. But the Utility Reform Network, a consumer group that regularly bashes the utilities for what it considers profit-motivated rate increases, has long agreed that rooftop solar incentives should be pared back. Same goes for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Both groups supported reducing incentives for new solar systems. The California Public Utilities Commission's consumer watchdog office estimates that Edison, PG&E and SDG&E customers without solar collectively paid $8.5 billion more for power last year due to net metering. 'Even if you quibble with our $8.5-billion estimate, there is a substantial cost shift,' said Mike Campbell, assistant deputy director of the Public Advocates Office. The solar industry has done more than quibble. The California Solar and Storage Assn., an industry trade group, commissioned an analysis from consulting firm scrutinizing the Public Advocates Office's methodology. Economist Richard McCann, who conducted the analysis, found that rooftop solar actually saved Edison, PG&E and SDG&E ratepayers $1.5 billion in 2024. 'The technical errors are embarrassing for a state agency to commit,' Bernadette Del Chiaro, outgoing executive director of the California Solar and Storage Assn., said in an email. Again: Who's right? I wish I had a good answer. But I mostly find this argument to be a mind-numbing waste of time. McCann pointed out a few places where it seems reasonably likely the Public Advocates Office overstated the cost shift. But the biggest purported error he identified was really more of a philosophical disagreement. Of the alleged $8.5-billion cost shift, McCann claimed that nearly $4 billion shouldn't count, because those dollars are actually lost utility revenue. Basically, utilities are losing $4 billion worth of revenue from electricity they would normally sell to solar customers — if those customers weren't producing and consuming their own power. Penalizing solar households for lost utility sales is like 'telling somebody who grows lettuce and tomatoes in their garden that they have to pay the grocery store, because the grocery store has to pay their rent,' McCann said. Only it's not like that, because people who grow vegetables don't need the grocery store. That's not true for solar customers, who do need the utility grid — even if they have batteries. They draw power from the utility grid when their panels don't produce enough. They export power to the grid when their panels produce too much. Really, the solar industry is making the same argument it's made for a decade: that the cost shift isn't real. If you dislike investor-owned utilities — and God knows they can be frustrating — you may be inclined to agree. But I don't think NRDC, the Utility Reform Network and other independent experts are all utility stooges. You can support rooftop solar and also believe the cost shift is a real problem that needs solving. In a rational world, we'd be done with this argument. Alas, the debate has only grown more toxic. McCann, for instance, recently engaged in a nasty spat with Severin Borenstein, a UC Berkeley energy economist and regular target of the solar industry's fury. Borenstein responded to McCann's critique of his work by accusing him of spreading misinformation; McCann wrote that Borenstein 'has apparently blocked me on LinkedIn.' Like I said, this is all a waste of time. And as I've written previously, I mostly blame Newsom. The governor, to his extreme discredit, has seemed happy to let his appointees slash rooftop solar incentives and watch installations drop sharply. Although he's largely avoided my requests for comment, I've long assumed he's responding to the immense political pull of the utility industry, and the unions representing utility employees. Against that backdrop, it's no wonder rooftop solar installers have dug so deep into their trenches. I don't blame the solar industry and its supporters for refusing to give an inch on net metering and the cost shift. If we want to move forward, Newsom and other policymakers and climate advocates who have dismissed rooftop solar need to start accepting what an important role it has to play — for reasons both practical and political. Some background: For years, many energy experts have considered utility-scale solar farms superior to rooftop solar, because they generate power at a lower cost due to economies of scale. Researchers have also found there aren't nearly enough rooftops to replace all the coal, oil and gas that the United States burns. In a January blog post, for instance, UC Berkeley's Borenstein wrote that he hopes California 'won't waste time in 2025 debating whether to walk back the limited progress we have made rationalizing policy on rooftop solar.' To me, that kind of thinking is shortsighted. Rooftop solar is no economist's dream. But there's a reason it's so popular. Families that go solar win themselves at least a measure of independence from big utilities. They can make their own electricity, reduce their monthly bills and, with a battery, stay powered during a blackout. Solar's not just for the wealthy anymore, either. The median income for a household installing solar dropped from $141,000 in 2010 to $115,000 in 2023, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. My experience as a journalist has taught me that many Californians would rank rooftop solar as their top climate priority. Throughout my career, there's been no climate solution that more readers have urged me to write about. No climate solution that has generated more press releases or more comments at the utilities commission. The lesson: When state officials sabotage rooftop solar, they're making a huge political mistake. When Newsom's appointees undermine rooftop solar — and the Legislature fails to step in — solar advocates see it as a sign he isn't the climate champion he claims to be. Or maybe he's been bought by the utility industry. If Newsom wants to build support for his other energy priorities — or a presidential run, or anything else — he should come out swinging for rooftop solar. Millions of Californians would be thrilled. He can find other ways to keep utility companies and their employees happy — helping the utilities stay out of bankruptcy, for instance. And again, California needs rooftop solar to confront the climate crisis. Even Edison has estimated the amount of rooftop and other small-scale solar on the grid will eventually double as the state targets 100% clean energy. All of which brings us back to where we started. Last month, Public Utilities Commission staff released a report suggesting that the commission or the Legislature consider lowering electric rates by saddling longtime solar customers with higher utility bills. Maybe those homes could be paid less for their extra solar power. Maybe utilities could charge them a flat monthly fee. Those are terrible suggestions — partly because they'd discourage solar investment, and partly because the solar industry or its allies could challenge them in court, further extending a debate that badly needs to end. 'It's of course illegal to change contracts on people,' Del Chiaro said. The simplest solution — an idea that's come up again and again as I've talked with experts about how to reduce electric rates — is for state lawmakers to spend more money subsidizing rooftop solar, and other policy priorities, out of the state budget. It's gotten too easy for lawmakers to pawn off climate and clean energy programs to the Public Utilities Commission, leading to simpler budget-balancing but out-of-control electric bills. When I asked Del Chiaro, though, she was apprehensive. Legislators are notoriously fickle. What if they dedicate a bunch of money to rooftop solar one year, then change their minds the next year? It happens all the time. I don't have an easy answer. But something needs to change. High electric rates are exceedingly unfair, especially for low- and middle-income families. They're also bad for the climate, because they make electric cars and heat pumps less attractive. Electric costs are a hard problem to solve; rooftop solar incentives are one of many layers. As I'll address in future columns, Newsom's appointees haven't done nearly enough to rein in utility industry spending and profits. Solving a problem, though, requires admitting you have one. It's time for Newsom, lawmakers and everyone else sparring over solar to sit down and make sure that 10 years from now, California is still the nation's rooftop solar leader — without burdening all electric ratepayers. Otherwise, we'll still be mired in this same agonizing debate. And the world will be a lot hotter. This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here. For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @ on Bluesky.
