PG&E Utility Criticisms

I blame PG&E as a for-profit entity is why.

in many country, electric(or energy) is state companythat way any infrastructure that related to serve the citizen well being isn't exploited for profitwhy US can't do this????

As I understand it, PG&E is a weird situation, as they're a for-profit but heavily regulated monopoly with no competitors. So, in terms of wildfires their options are:1. Spend their savings on network maintenance. Not possible as they've got zero money having been liable for a bunch of costly wildfires.2. Stop serving loss-making wilderness customers who need costly-to-maintain cables run through forests. Not possible due to legal service obligation.3. Raise prices for los

In California, PG&E is ridiculously expensive and generally hostile toward homeowners. Heck, they even blow up city blocks and burn down cities on a regular basis.Anything that bypasses them is probably more efficient than working with them.

It is under regulation that is the problem here. PG&E has caused multiple huge disasters through negligence that have caused deaths and billions in damages that they pass on to rate payers. And this is after they redirected funds for maintenance directly to executive compensation.The regulators should have thrown the hammer down on PG&E then, but after the disaster happens the money has to come from somewhere. Even if PG&E declares bankruptcy, the grid must run, and people

Most people agree that we need utilities to be monopolies. PG&E, for all intents and purposes, is an arm of the state. Perhaps it’s private in some sense but we all know it’s the government. It has to abide by all manner of government mandates, there is no competition. If you want it to go bankrupt just let it go bankrupt. Whatever replaces it will be the same thing. I don’t have a solution but all the teeth gnashing isn’t going to change the fact that electricity is a government issue and w

Probably some of these:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-owned_utility

Are there any right now? PG&E has done a pretty poor job, burned down half the state and then went bankrupt. Partially despite/because of heavy regulations. Why not nationalize them altogether and remove the profit seeking middlemen and just let the state run it?

PG&E is much worse than a private company. It is the weird result of heavy government regulation on the wrong most ant-competitive ways + lots of lobbying. PG&E is not subject to any free markets. Cali for example has 3 of these companies each serving certain regions. When there was completion in the power market you had multiple companies inside cities all providing different kinds of service (AC, DC, varying volts/amps) in crazy ways that would result in most of our modern electro

PG&E is an investor-owned regulated monopoly. Other utilities in California are publicly owned (either government, or non-profit. For example, LADWP, SMUD, Palo Alto, Turlock and many, many more). Those publicly owned utilities have much lower rates.PG&E has a "revenue requirement" which is the amount it needs to bring in to cover operating, energy procurement, construction, and profit. At the most simplistic level, rates ($/kWh) are set by dividing the revenue requi