A new state law is likely to bring significant changes to how PG&E offers new services to customers.

The Powering Up Californians Act will help PG&E connect 2,000 more new customers to the grid in 2024, compared to 2023, when we connected more than 11,000 new customers.

“Our goal is simple: We will serve every new commercial customer that can be served in 2024,” said Matt Ventura, senior director of service planning & design at PG&E. “We are excited to accelerate California’s electrification efforts and contribute to regional and local economic development by connecting new homes and growing businesses to our grid.”

Under the new law, the California Public Utilities Commission voted in July to allow PG&E to invest up to $2.3 billion in new projects through 2026. That sum is in addition to the $2.5 billion the company has already earmarked for new grid connections.

The commission will review the spending to ensure it is fair and reasonable before it impacts electricity prices. Spending the full $2.3 billion would result in an annual electricity bill increase of less than 1% across the system.

By adding thousands of new grid connections, electricity prices are expected to fall over time as the fixed costs of grid operation and maintenance are spread across more customers.

An accompanying law set reasonable average target periods for connecting new services and provided for mandatory reporting on utilities that fail to meet their obligations and third-party cost audits.

“This legislation strikes a balance between providing needed resources and holding PG&E accountable for our new business performance,” Ventura said. “We appreciate the efforts of California lawmakers and utility regulators to create this more flexible funding structure that will help us meet increasing electricity demand across our service territory.”

Representatives of the construction industry praised the new law and the Commission’s decision.

“Funding from the Powering Up Californians Act is critical to meeting the need amid California’s extreme housing shortage. It gives PG&E the ability to power more new homes and communities without delay,” said Dan Dunmoyer, president and CEO of the California Building Industry Association.

The Incident Management Team takes the lead

To focus efforts on improved new services, PG&E has established an Incident Management Team – a centralized organization that mobilizes employees from across the company to respond to emergencies or significant issues.

The team meets daily to monitor progress, resolve issues and ensure we deliver for customers.

Thanks to the new funding and the incident management team’s streamlined processes, PG&E will be able to serve 30% more customers in 2024 than in 2023, Ventura said.

The team is in the process of identifying all customers who want to be connected to the grid in 2024 and has already identified more than 5,000 customers who should not have been connected in 2024 but will now do so through the new initiative.

“These customers include residential communities, new construction projects, expanding businesses, data centers and electric vehicle charging stations – the kind of new projects we need to meet both the state’s housing goals and its ambitious clean energy goals,” said Steven Fischer, senior director of Service Planning & Design and leader of the Incident Management Team. “We look forward to serving these new customers.”

Further improvements

The additional funding and enhanced response are the result of more than a year of industry collaboration to improve PG&E’s new service connections.

In July 2023, the company signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the California Building Industry Association to work together to improve new service connections.

The MoU established an Advisory Committee and a Technical Working Committee to facilitate the implementation of four key commitments.

PG&E has fulfilled three of these commitments:

• Pre-construction planningto plan the connection work immediately after the customers have paid the contract payments, instead of waiting to plan until all permits are in place and the sites are ready for construction.
• Centralized supportEstablish a dedicated team of experienced managers and incumbents with monthly forums to escalate issues to the candidate designers who are designing interconnectors for customers connecting to PG&E’s system.
• Transitional solutions for power supplyto allow developers to use temporary arrangements to bridge gaps when a delay occurs between the requested start-up date and PG&E’s start-up date.

The fourth commitment outlined in the MOU is the launch of a pilot program that could support a rate change that allows developers to use PG&E-approved contractors to perform electrical hookup work, which will now be reserved for authorized PG&E crews.

The pilot program must be approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, and the agency’s review process is expected to be completed in early 2025.

The collaboration between PG&E and CBIA has already led to significant improvements in the connection of new services.

PG&E’s more than 11,000 connections in 2023 are an increase from the approximately 9,000 connections in 2022, despite historic storms in the first quarter of 2023 that delayed nearly 1,500 new connections.

The team also saw a 30% reduction in the backlog of work in progress and $24 million in savings in 2023, while reducing the average end-to-end lead time by 50 days, or 13%.

“We are pleased with the progress we have made working with our industry partners,” Ventura said. “We know there is more work ahead. We are ready to tackle that work with the resources made available to us by this new legislation.”