CPUC Sets New Safety Metrics To Improve Utility Risk Mitigation and Safety Performance
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), in ongoing efforts to incorporate risk-based decision-making into utility rate cases, today enhanced its oversight and enforcement of investor-owned utilities (IOUs) by improving risk mitigation and safety monitoring of all IOUs. Today’s Decision also establishes specific metrics to systemically evaluate Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s (PG&E) operational safety performance and to further implement the Enhanced Oversight and Enforcement Process imposed upon PG&E by the CPUC as a condition of approving PG&E’s plan for exiting bankruptcy in May 2020. These efforts seek to promote the highest safety performance of all IOUs in their provision of safe and reliable electric service to Californians.
Transparent, risk-based investment decision-making approaches better inform the CPUC and interested parties in evaluating how energy utilities assess, manage, mitigate, and minimize safety risks. Today’s Decision adopts 10 new Safety Performance Metrics, building on those previously adopted, for PG&E, Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas Company, and San Diego Gas & Electric, and modifies 19 existing Safety Performance Metrics.
Specific to PG&E, the CPUC adopted 32 Safety and Operational Metrics covering electric (wildfire) safety, electric reliability, and natural gas safety. Beginning in March 2022, PG&E must file biannual reports with the CPUC that include historical data for each metric, a narrative description of progress on each metric towards proposed targets, and a description of current and future activities to meet the proposed targets. Newly established metrics include tracking specific safety related inspections and incidences within areas and communities highly threatened by wildfire, tracking the frequency and duration of electric power disruptions, as well as tracking serious injuries and fatalities of the public and PG&E employees and contractors. Engineers and analysts at the CPUC will utilize qualitative and quantitative techniques to assess current data and historical trends for each metric. Such data evaluation will also allow for identifying and examining safety incidences or outcomes that deviate from positive performance trends for informing inspections, compliance audits, possible investigations, and enforcement actions by the CPUC.
The Enhanced Oversight and Enforcement Process for PG&E is a transparent, six-step enforcement framework established by the CPUC with escalating enforcement actions at each step, including placing conditions or revoking PG&E’s license to operate in California. These steps are triggered by specific findings or events, including failure to make sufficient progress on Safety and Operational Metrics. In April 2020, the CPUC placed PG&E into step one of the Enhanced Oversight and Enforcement Process based on the company’s failure to sufficiently prioritize clearing vegetation on its highest-risk power lines as part of its wildfire mitigation work in 2020. And, in August 2021, CPUC President Marybel Batjer directed CPUC staff to conduct a fact-finding review regarding a pattern of PG&E self-reported missed inspections and other self-reported safety incidents to determine whether a recommendation to advance PG&E further within the Enhanced Oversight and Enforcement Process is warranted.
The CPUC is taking many actions to hold PG&E accountable for safely serving its customers, including:
- Directed PG&E to take immediate action to reduce and mitigate customer impacts from the sudden loss of power due to PG&E’s execution of its Fast Trip program.
- Conducting fact-finding to determine whether to recommend advancing PG&E further within the Enhanced Oversight and Enforcement process.
- Placed PG&E into the first step of an Enhanced Oversight and Enforcement process based on the company’s failure to sufficiently prioritize clearing vegetation on its highest-risk power lines as part of its wildfire mitigation work in 2020.
- Directed PG&E to address its preparedness for Public Safety Power Shutoffs at a public briefing.
- Ordered PG&E to make enhancements to its Public Safety Power Shutoff process.
- Ordered PG&E to create a mobile app for customers to report electric infrastructure safety concerns.
- Continual monitoring of PG&E’s safety enhancement actions ordered in a 2018-2020 natural gas system locate and mark investigation.
- Continual monitoring of PG&E’s safety enhancement actions ordered in a 2017-2018 wildfires investigation.
- Ongoing monitoring and reporting of PG&E’s safety culture ordered in a 2015 investigation following PG&E’s 2010 natural gas transmission pipeline explosion in San Bruno.
The proposal voted on is available at https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M420/K370/420370335.PDF.
Documents related to the proceeding are available at https://apps.cpuc.ca.gov/apex/f?p=401:56:0::NO:RP,57,RIR:P5_PROCEEDING_SELECT:R2007013.
The CPUC regulates services and utilities, safeguards the environment, and assures Californians’ access to safe and reliable utility infrastructure and services. For more information on the CPUC, please visit www.cpuc.ca.gov.
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