PG&E has no control over the weather, winds, firefighting budgets, or forest policy, yet it alone is now to be held in total responsibility for all fires that originate with its equipment? thats absurd.
(Fwiw this is just a gut feeling, I don't have actual numbers to back anything up)
Remember state-wide we’re talking about ~$5b of energy (generation cost) per year. How much do you want to pay to transmit that $5b of energy?
There are two reasons why you're wrong.
First, PG&E can't control the weather but did have control over its operations, e.g., how it maintained its equipment, how much it prepared for problems, how it managed risk. It may be tricky to determine if it's truly at fault, but it's equally tricky to determine that it's in the clear.
Second, a large utility is not like a private company. We cannot let a large utility fail, and therefore they are more like a government organization than a private company. When they mess up and hurt people, everyone needs to pitch in and help, not just those that are affected, as everyone shares the benefits and responsibilities of keeping them afloat.
A literalist interpretation of this quote is 'when there is a fire, hold the utility responsible unless it can be proven otherwise'.
If that is to be the standard then a utility can't afford to run when there is a fire risk. Realistically that law is unenforceable due to being too expensive, but proving that in practice will involve a lot of pain for either shareholders or ratepayers.
Innocent unless proven otherwise is the usual standard for a good reason - it is a mistake to punish without substantial evidence that has been closely reviewed by a number of legal and technical experts.
> Second, a large utility is not like a private company. We cannot let a large utility fail
Figure out a way to let it fail. Maybe the lines are state owned but companies can partake in an auction for a 12-month exclusive right to maintain the line and charge people for using it. Too-big-to-fail is a problem that can be fixed.
I'm not advocating strict liability here. I'm arguing that when a large company has a history of negligence that gave rise to similar incidents, the burden should shift to them to prove they were not the cause of the accident.
I see no way utilities provided by a for-profit company make sense. They are monopolies for services across entire swaths of the population. I can’t select which company I receive power from. In this model paying dividends to shareholders simply means that there was either some service/maintenance cut, or they set their rates too high for their customers.
At best, utilities should be government ran. Their “shareholders” should be those that foot the bill at the end of the day. At worst, at least make them nonprofit entities so that they’ll focus their efforts on bettering the product rather than doing what they can to improve shareholder dividends.
You can choose your supplier but not who runs your distribution.