San Francisco’s Breakup With PG&E Could Cost $22.5 Billion, Utility Tells State | KQED

A government takeover of PG&E’s grid in San Francisco comes with a whopping $22.5 billion price tag, the company told state regulators on Tuesday. PG&E said in testimony to the California Public Utilities Commission, which determines the value of the company’s assets, that the move to a government-run utility would incur costs of $13.9 billion for electric and property assets in the city, $7.6 billion in damages for business severance and $1 billion for physical separation severance. The costs are significantly more than San Francisco’s earlier valuation of around $3.4 billion, which the company said only includes fair-market value of assets. City Attorney David Chiu said the company’s asking price is bold after the city experienced 40 large-scale blackouts — roughly one a week — since a huge outage hit more than 100,000 residents last December. “A utility with a financial interest in protecting its monopoly doesn’t have the last word on what its assets are worth.

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