PG&E Wildfire Mitigation Costs Drive Up Capital Spending Plans

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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) (San Francisco, California), one of the country's largest power utilities, plans to make $7.1 billion in capital expenditures (capex) this year, roughly $500 million more than last year, and between $22.8 billion and $28 billion during the 2020-2023 period, the company told investors last month on its first-quarter earnings call.

Click on the image at right to see the range of capital spending that PG&E Company plans to make over the 2019-2023 period.

PG&E, the electric and gas utility unit of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG) (San Francisco, California), could not be more specific about its spending plans for 2020-2023, owing to several undecided matters before state and federal regulators. But the utility, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization this past January, was more definitive about its total wildfire-related outlays over the next five years: $8.2 billion in capital and operating outlays, with roughly $5 billion going for capital measures and $3.2 billion directed to operating expenses.

Click on the image at right to see the PG&E's plans to invest $8.2 billion to prevent wildfires over the 2019-2023 period.

PG&E faces as much as $30 billion in uncovered liabilities for recent California wildfires, which led to its Chapter 11 filing on January 29. The utility provides regulated electric and gas service to about 16 million Californians over a 70,000-square-mile service area, a service territory that is roughly equal in size to Oklahoma.

Industrial Info is tracking 77 PG&E projects valued at about $5.28 billion. The largest single outlay, at $3.7 billion, is for decommissioning and dismantling the mothballed Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Station. The project is not scheduled to kick off construction for five years, although engineering is scheduled to begin in mid-2020.

But the utility also plans to invest about $204 million in three battery energy storage systems (BESS), reflecting an industry trend to invest in energy storage technologies, aside from the traditional pumped hydropower storage units. The smallest BESS project, at 10 megawatts (MW) of capacity, is scheduled to kick off in October 2019 while the other two are scheduled to break ground in mid-2020.

As it was required to divest most of its generation years ago, most of PG&E's capital spending in the coming years, aside from Diablo Canyon, will go to build or upgrade transmission lines and substations. The utility also is nearing completion of a large capital project to decommission and dismantle the Humboldt Bay nuclear plant.

Following several particularly tragic wildfire seasons, California enacted a law last year requiring all electric utilities in the state to file a wildfire mitigation plan by January 1, 2020. PG&E's $8.2 billion in wildfire-related preventative measures over the 2019-2023 period includes:

• Public safety power shut-off when high winds threaten
• Enhanced asset inspection program
• Increased situational awareness
• System hardening
• More active vegetation management

On the financial front, the utility's parent, PG&E Corporation, reported first-quarter net earnings of $136 million on revenue of $4 billion for the three-month period ended March 30, 2019. During the company's May 2 earnings call, PG&E Corporation officials said first-quarter results in that quarter were negatively impacted by several non-recurring charges, including:

• $210 million in electric asset inspection costs
• $192 million in costs relating to last year's Camp Fire, which destroyed the city of Paradise, California
• $127 million in Chapter 11 costs

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