Dive Brief:
- Despite being the number one U.S. solar utility for 2013, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) Corporation Q1 2014 net income was down to $227 million from Q1 2013’s $239 million, largely due to a $40 million in cost associated with natural gas pipeline safety-related work.
- PG&E President/CEO/Chair Tony Earley acknowledged the impact of the San Bruno costs, which are to-date and committed-ahead at $2.7 billion, and stressed the importance of pipeline safety and reliability while urging California’s regulators to “resolve pending gas proceedings.”
- PG&E Q1 2014 operating earnings, which exclude non-recurring, adjusted, and discontinued budget items like the costs of the San Bruno incident and are considered the most useful earnings measure, were also down, from Q1 2013’s $276 million to $251 million due primarily to a 2014 General Rate Case delay in cost recovery.
Dive Insight:
Along with its gas pipeline enhancement program, Earley said, PG&E completed a refueling outage at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, the only operating nuclear facility left in California, during Q1.
As part of a broad-based public relations push to demonstrate responsibility to its ratepayers, PG&E recently announced an evaluation of its earthquake readiness and a $2.5 million donation to the Red Cross emergency preparedness program.
PG&E was named the leading U.S. utility in solar for 2013 by the Solar Electric Power Association with 1,471 new megawatts of capacity installed and 28,807 projects interconnected last year, including 281 watts-per-customer and five projects interconnected-per-customer.
Looking ahead, PG&E projected its rate base growth will take it from $28 billion to $28.5 billion in 2014 to $30 billion to $32.5 billion next year, and to $32 billion to $35 billion in 2016.
