California regulators on Thursday approved a rate hike for San Diego’s utility to recover the costs of wildfire mitigation the company has already completed.
What happened: The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday approved a San Diego Gas & Electric rate increase that will raise the average customer bill by about 3 percent, a $5 per month jump.
The bump will allow the utility to recover wildfire mitigation work it completed from May 2019 through the end of 2022 that fell outside of its pre-approved 2019 general rate case decision. The utility requested $284 million for operations and maintenance costs and $1.2 billion for capital projects. But the CPUC found about $450 million of those expenses to be unreasonable and cut them from their final approval.
Why it matters: The rate increase comes at a time when political blowback to California’s high utility prices is at a fever pitch. It also represents another example of the CPUC rolling out a last-minute revision delaying a decision on a point that drew utility pushback.
