The San Bruno Beacon

The problem with the Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) is [you fill in the blank].

Especially after PG&E's dismal performance during the storm we experienced here in the San Francisco Bay Area a few weeks ago most, if not all, PG&E customers probably have a different way to finish the sentence at the top of this page.

From a regulatory standpoint, it is clear that deregulation in its present form has failed. The California State Legislature needs to explore new options for the delivery of energy in California. In its present form, California's energy delivery system does not provide affordable, sustainable, reliable energy. It is time for the State of California and the Federal Government to create a public works program for energy delivery in California that will rival the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) program of the 1930s.

On January 4, 2008 a storm swept through the San Francisco Bay Area leaving more than 1 million Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) customers without electricity.

By San Francisco Bay Area standards this storm was bad. However, from a personal perspective, I can remember storms in the early 1980's howling through the San Francisco Bay Area that made last week's storm look like a moderate rain shower. And guess what? In those howling storms of the early 1980s there were very few power outages in the San Francisco Bay Area and any that did occur were quickly fixed. There were also storms in the 1990s that were as bad if not worse than the storm we just had and they did not result in catastrophic long term power outages for a million PG&E customers.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, PG&E operates in a relatively mild weather environment compared to utility companies in the Northeast and the Midwest. However, in many cases, PG&E can't even keep the power on when it rains or a moderate wind kicks up. During the storm last week, faced with what in the Northeast or Midwest would be a moderate weather event, the power delivery system for electricity that PG&E operates catastrophically failed. More than 1 million customers lost power while PG&E stumbled and bumbled behind its computer answering systems and telephone banks offering, in many cases, incorrect and misleading information to the customers it left stranded in cold and dark homes for many days.

Another thing I have noticed is that the electric power grid in San Mateo County seems to be more fragile than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. In other words, it seems like the electric system's immunity to wind and rain has deteriorated to the point that even moderate winds and rains are causing sporadic outages. It is no wonder that this most recent storm crippled PG&E to the point where 1 million customers lost power.

It also appears that during a power outage crisis, PG&E goes into a punch drunk mode acting like a dazed and confused boxer wandering around the ring after taking too many right and left hooks to the head. I found that the numerous estimated restoral times PG&E gave me were meaningless. My personal experience with PG&E leads me to believe that their customer service department has little or no idea about what is going on in the field and just makes up restoral times in order to have something to say. It seems that each time you call PG&E in an emergency to find out when the power will be restored they give you a restoral time that is never met.

The power outage in my area was not as long as the outages in other areas that in some cases lasted for as long as a week or more. However, my experience with PG&E illustrates some of the problems this company is having.

On Friday, January 4, 2008, we lost power at about 4:00 AM. I was initially told by the PG&E computer telephone system that my power would be restored somewhere between 5:00 AM and 7:00 AM. Didn't happen. Next time frame for service restoral was between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM. Didn't happen. 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM. Didn't happen. 9:00 PM to 11:00 PM. Didn't happen. Then, at about 11:30 PM, the lights go on across the street. But still no lights on my side of the street. I call PG&E. This time, I get a human being and she tells me that the estimated time of power restoral is 11:30 PM. Didn't happen. And on and on it went. Each time I received a power restoral time from a PG&E computer phone call or a PG&E human representative, it was never met; just replaced with yet another restoral time. About mid morning on Saturday, January 5th my house got power. However, once again, after only having power for a few hours, all of the houses across the street from me and in the next neighborhood lost power. These poor people never got their power back until Sunday, January 6 at about 11:00 PM.

When you call PG&E you are connected to a robotized answering system that you communicate with using your keypad. At the end of the conversation you are told by a disembodied computer voice that you will be given updates on the time your power will be restored. In the rare instance where you are able to successfully navigate the phalanx of telephone prompts, and wait on hold, you get to talk with some person working at some remote location who offers you little or no real information. In one case, I spoke with a person at a PG&E telephone center who told me that I was lucky they were giving me a restoral time because most people don't get one. The problem was that the restoral time I was given by this person was never met just like the power restoral times I had been given before this call and the ones I would be given after this call.

Last week I spoke for about an hour with a PG&E representative about the recent power outages. To make a long story short, we agreed that PG&E had some problems during the recent storm. Some of the things I suggested were:

1). PG&E customer service call centers need to get on the same page when it comes to providing customers with information about restoral times during emergencies. The PG&E Representative I spoke with said that during this recent storm there were different call centers operating and that a customer's call was not always routed to the same call center. OK, but assuming that PG&E has a centralized computer system tracking outages, there should not be a variance in the information given assuming all call centers work off of the same centralized database. If these geographically separated call centers do not work off of a centralized database they should.

2). The PG&E Representative I spoke with said that PG&E Customer Service representatives, at the call centers, were working shifts of 17 hours and longer. Most people working 17 hour or longer shifts at a call center listening to complaints and worse, especially during an emergency, are going to hit the proverbial wall and burn out. This indicates that PG&E has a staffing problem at its call centers and needs to hire more people to work shorter shifts.

3). There should be a better communications between the PG&E line crews in the field doing repairs and the call centers. In other words, PG&E needs to upgrade its power grid with real-time tracking and communication systems that pinpoint outages and track line crews so that during outages, customers receive more detailed and accurate information about the progress of work and the time their power will be restored.

4). PG&E needs to find the financial, political, and engineering resources to upgrade its fragile, aging power grid with a robust, state of the art power delivery system able to stand up to all type of weather conditions. A power delivery system that is only able to operate in optimal weather conditions is like a ship that can only able to operate in mild seas.

5). From an internal standpoint, PG&E needs to start demanding a higher level of performance from the people specifically in charge of the systems and operations that fail and replacing deficient managers with people capable of getting the job done. Of course, the person ultimately responsible and accountable for all of these problems is PG&E Corporation's Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, and President Peter A. Darbee. According to his Forbes Profile, in 2006 Mr. Darbee earned $7,990,058 in cash compensation and $5,243,986 in stock options. You would think that a person who gets paid that type of money would have a few ideas for making PG&E a better company than it is and moving forward with some bold initiatives to improve PG&E's power delivery system.

If there is a bright spot to be found in this disaster it is in the hard work and brave efforts of the PG&E line crews who literally risked life and limb to piece together the crumbling system in the midst of a storm. Absent the efforts of these brave people, it is safe to say that our homes would still be dark and cold. These are the people who actually keep the power grid operating. These are folks who really earn their money and whatever they are being paid you can be sure they aren't being paid enough for the dangerous work they do.

So what is the problem with PG&E? I don't know what your answer to this question is but here's mine: