Root Cause Analysis of the wildfires of 2017 and the Camp fire of 2018 (I.19-06-015)
In 2017 and 2018, PG&E electrical equipment was involved in igniting a series of 17 wildfires in Northern California, including the Camp Fire, which is the most destructive fire in California history.
In June of 2019, The California Public Utilities Commission opened an investigation (I.19-06-015) to “determine whether Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), violated any provision(s) of the California Public Utilities Code (PU Code), Commission General Orders (GO) or decisions, or other applicable rules or requirements pertaining to the maintenance and operation of its electric facilities that were involved in igniting fires in its service territory in 2017.”
In Decision D.20-05-019, as part of an array of enforcement actions that included $2 billion in penalties imposed on PG&E for their role in the catastrophic fires, the CPUC ordered PG&E shareholders to pay for an independent root cause analysis (RCA) of each of the wildfires in the OII. Envista Forensics, Inc (Envista) was selected as the RCA company. Envista began the RCA investigation on July 6th, 2021.
On July 6th 2022, PG&E served the parties to the OII with the final RCA report from Envista. The final report includes the results for all the wildfires in the OII.
The full root cause analysis, findings, and recommendations can be found here: link
Events
On December 15, 2023, the Final Staff Proposal was released.
The Final Staff Proposal updated a due date on Phase 1 of Corrective Action 1, to align with the Resolution due date. The updates to the Staff Proposal can be found in the following errata.
On November 30, 2023, the Commission passed Resolution SPD-19.
On November 27, 2023, revisions were made to the draft Resolution based on the comments received and noticed on the Commission's Daily Calendar for voting on November 30, 2023.
- Draft Agenda Resolution SPD-19 (redlined version)
On October 27, 2023, a draft Resolution was served on the service lists of I.19-06-015 and R.18-10-007, noticed on the Commission’s Daily Calendar, and placed on the Commission's agenda. And on November 16, 2023, comments on the draft resolution were received from PG&E.
CPUC staff has developed a draft proposal to implement corrective actions that follow from the RCA findings. The staff proposal recommends how to dispose of approximately $63M in PG&E shareholder funds to address the recommendations from the RCA report. The staff proposal will be the basis for a CPUC resolution that allocates these funds. We anticipate this resolution will be voted out by the Commission in November 2023.
On July 31, 2023, interested stakeholders were asked to submit informal comments on the draft staff proposal to the PG&E wildfire OII (I.19-06-015) service list and to wildfireRCA@cpuc.ca.gov.
Stakeholder comments received by August 30, 2023, are listed here:
Stakeholder reply comments received by September 11th are listed here:
Next Steps
The Resolution SPD-19 is currently scheduled to be voted on at the Nov 30, 2023, Commission meeting.
Past Events
December 5, 2022: (I.19-06-015) PG&E 2017- 2018 Wildfires: Root Cause Analysis Workshop - 1:00pm-5:00pm
The Utility Reform Network (TURN)
Related Documents
- August 4, 2022: PG&E's response to Envista's Root Cause Analysis Recommendations
- July 6, 2022: Envista's final report of the Root Cause Analysis of the 2017 and 2018 Wildfires