PG&E’s top executives contritely answered questions about last week’s power shutoffs from their state regulators Friday afternoon.
About 2 million people lost power as PG&E’s website repeatedly crashed, its call centers were overwhelmed and people with disabilities struggled to power life-saving devices.
California Public Utility Commission President Marybel Batjer began the meeting at CPUC headquarters in San Francisco by telling PG&E that their handling of the power shutoff was “inadequate.”
“I can tell you that you guys failed on so many levels, on fairly simple stuff,” she said.
PG&E CEO Bill Johnson said that it could take up to 10 years for the utility to improve its system enough to not have to rely on power shutoffs to prevent wildfires during dry, windy conditions.
Johnson said that over the next decade the number of power shutoffs will decline as PG&E reroutes the electric grid so that it can shut off power to smaller areas, invests in microgrids to keep power on during emergencies and updates thousands of miles of power lines in fire-prone areas.
But while Johnson said that he was accountable for communication problems, he defended the shutoff, saying that the company did it for safety.
“One of the things that stands out in my mind is that we did not have any catastrophic fires in Northern and Central California. Itâs hard to prove a negative,” Johnson said.
Johnson also defended the utility’s infrastructure.
“It is a misconception that we turned off power because our system is in shambles,” Johnson said. “Our system is in pretty good shape. The [public safety power shutoff] was driven by a widespread wind event.”
Utility executives said that they found about 100 instances where high winds damaged or presented a hazard to electrical equipment since the shutoff. They said that most of the damage involved vegetation, like trees, grass or brush coming into contact with power lines.
Sumeet Singh, vice president of PG&E’s community wildfire safety program, estimated that it could take 10 to 14 years for the company to finish updating about 7,100 miles of power lines in high fire risk areas, and 8 years to improve vegetation management on 25,000 miles of lines in high-risk areas.
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