You PG&E customers may be interested in reading "Connecting with PG&E" at http://www.homestead.com/buttecounty2k and go to bottom and click on Page 2

The utility was in the news frequently last year because of the Dec 10 SF blackout, as well as several criminal trials, and convictions, for failure to maintain safety requirements.

It also diverted some 100plus million dollars that could/should have been used for safety, upgrading equipment, maintaining substations etc to more profitable uses.

Always cracks me up when I hear people say that big companies HAVE to fix the problem because of the profit motive. PG&E is corporate greed at it's finest.

Also, last Dec a man called about a preparedness workshop I was presenting. He asked what I thought would happen, to which I replied that no one knew. "BS" he said. "They know." Then he told me that his son and daughter wre programmers, hired help, but working for PG&E, and had dealings with the inner circles. He told me that "they" know the whole thing is going to go down.

He never came to the workshop. Nvr heard form him again. Why did he call? A highway patrol officer, after hearing this, told me that it was like informants: he had information he wanted me to know.

Nevertheless, the facts of PG&E's corporate malfeasance remain.

Buy more batteries.

-- johno (jobriy2k@yahoo.com), November 05, 1999

Answers

johno--would you please provide a hot link, I did a yahoo search it could not locate your site. Thanks

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), November 05, 1999.

John you are correct about the $100 million that was squandered. As a result of the squandering, PG&E is in the midst of going before the CPUC requesting an $822 million increase for operating costs. This is a general rate increase. For the proposed requested electric increase $445 million - a ruling judge said they won't be getting anything and on top of that reduce your electric costs by $43 million. For the gas, PG&E requested $377 million, and the CPUC judge ruled only $20 million. They told PG&E to reduce tree trimming by 1/3, electrical by 1/3 and gas service by 1/3. It's not the worker's fault, it TPTB's fault. Info gleaned from "PG&E WEEK," November 1, 1999.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), November 05, 1999.

One more note to add, because we have deregulation here in California, anyone who does not like their energy provider, they can choose another service provider for their energy needs.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), November 05, 1999.

Wrong, bardou.

Here in SMUDland - Sacramento Muni. Utility District - we have no choice.

-- Grrr (grrr@grrr.net), November 05, 1999.

Oh yea, I forgot about Sacto.......

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), November 05, 1999.

Excellent subject / title on this thread, BTW !     :}

(In all fairness, we do get natural gas from PG&E - but the deregulation applied only to power (I take it) 'cause I never heard about any opportunity to switch to another gas provider...)

-- Grrr (grrr@grrr.net), November 05, 1999.

bardou, Yes Californians can choose another service provider, but that is more or less a billing arrangement at least that is what it looks like after all the PR smoke is removed. Before de regulation, power companies like our friends PG&E did it all. Now, PG&E is specializing in the distribution of energy (although they still have a couple of nuclear plants they are having trouble unloading). Generation and transmission are being taken over by other companies. Net net, they still own the wires that come to your home. Near me, the Moss Landing generation plant is owned by Duke power. If we have an outage, I suspect their contracted customers and companies will come first.

With no real oversight into the electric power providers and the issues of embedded systems and Y2K, fragmentation of responsibility always makes it harder to achieve a goal or figure out who screwed up.

-- Nancy (wellsnl@hotmail.com), November 05, 1999.

Nancy, what are the two nuclear plants PG&E is having a hard time unloaind?

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), November 05, 1999.

Nancy, what are the two nuclear plants PG&E is having a hard time unloading?

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), November 05, 1999.

No doubt it will always be PG&E that screwed up because they are responsible for the maintenance and up keep of the distribution system. I'm afraid anything that happens within Moss Landing power plant, will be Dukes problem. They bought it, they will eat it.

P.S,. The only nuclear power plant that PG&E owns that I know of, is Diablo Canyon, and they are keeping that one.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), November 05, 1999.

bardou-- I don't know how to make my site address a hotlink on this page (I was using cuneiform tablets just last month) but you can cut and paste to get there, http://www.homestead.com/buttecounty2k don't have the exact file name in front of me but go to bottom of page click page 2 and find it easy.

the essay is about 15 pages long, with lots of creepy info and newsbits. One I especially like takes place in Butte County where I live. PG&E was fined $500,000 for safety violations (tree trimming) and recently the county wanted PG&E to pick up the tab for other tree trimming projects. PG&E protested and told the county that because of PG&E the county had been able to hire more firefighters or buy fire fighting equipment. The upshot was that PG&E was saying "You made out good because we had to pay a big fine for our neglect, please don't cut any more out of our profits."

Ah, its a good life!

-- johno (jobriy2k@yahoo.com), November 07, 1999.