Elias: $400M ‘loan’ to PG&E to keep nuclear plant going a raw deal

For the umpteenth time in the last 60 years, California electric consumers are again being pestered for more money. As usual, the stated reason is they must pay up by the hundreds of millions of dollars to keep the lights on.

This time it’s through a $400 million “loan” to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to help pay for extending the life of the nuclear Diablo Canyon Power Plant on the coast north of San Luis Obispo. Never mind that this facility was officially relegated to the dust bin, effective next year, during the 2010s.

Gov. Gavin Newsom panicked later, though, over the reality that renewable power has been slower than expected in coming online. So he brokered a 2022 deal extending the atomic power plant’s life until at least 2030 with state loans that the federal government would cover.

Does anyone seriously think the feds will do that if Donald Trump should regain the White House? The same goes for the newest “loan,” reluctantly approved by state legislators this summer as part of their budget deal with Newsom. Don’t expect PG&E to repay it.

Right now, it’s not federal taxpayers funding PG&E to keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open past next year. Instead, it’s utility customers almost everywhere in California. Yes, even if your power arrives via Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric or PacifiCorp, you are still being dunned for Diablo.

One big question is why this extension should be foisted off on millions of folks who don’t deal directly with PG&E. The Newsom answer is that Diablo Canyon’s power is needed to prevent blackouts during this year’s record-level heat waves, even if that juice has to flow hundreds of miles across the state’s electric grid to be useful.

What about all those so-called “peaker” plants, though, that operate at times of high electric use all over the state? Their purpose when approved was to keep the grid going in times of extreme need. Are they now superfluous, with Diablo Canyon resurrected? Utility executives and the benighted state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) don’t answer that question.

Rather, millions of electric customers must pay ever-higher bills without argument. For the most part, they do it too, forking over whatever amount appears on monthly invoices. Meanwhile, who’s to say Diablo Canyon will be more reliable than it’s ever been? When working, that one plant can produce 8.5% of all the energy needed to run everything electric in California.

Diablo Canyon shut down for much of 2022, though, because it violated PG&E’s own management procedures. Those outages came when a hydrogen cooling system in the plant’s Unit 2 leaked and had to be shut down manually. Hello, peakers.

Diablo was equally unreliable in 2020-21, when it experienced 149 days of unplanned outages over a 476-day period. Essentially, the plant produced next to nothing one-third of the time. How smart is it to depend for backup power on a plant that has shown itself prone to extended breakdowns? What if those shutdowns happen during heat waves and other times of ultra-high air conditioning use?

It’s all part of the coddling of big privately-owned utilities by a long series of California governors, Republicans and Democrats. All received large campaign donations from the companies, Newsom’s own take coming to more than $10 million over his career.

That $10 million is chump change for PG&E and the others when they can snap their fingers and get sycophantic political tools to provide them hundreds of millions, often billions in ratepayer money. In fact, even as utility customers pay to keep Diablo Canyon going, the PUC may soon authorize even more money for the companies, again starting with PG&E.

Rather than limiting those firms to applying every four years for basic rate increases, they can now come back to the trough as often as they can convince the PUC they need more money to create new power for the electric vehicles the state hopes will dominate new car sales in the near future.

It all adds up to more costs for customers, more inflation and less money in most wallets. This makes now a good time for the PUC to become elective and start answering to the millions it loves to pester for money.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.