California bars utilities from cutting off power to customers who fall behind on their bills when it’s dangerously hot outside – a basic safety protection. Losing power in some rural areas can also mean losing water, and in cities, having no way to cool down can be dangerous, even deadly, when hot weather spans several days.
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California regulators concluded more than a year ago that rules protecting delinquent customers from power shutoffs during heat waves weren’t strong enough. They ordered the state’s largest utilities to come up with better safeguards.
When the utilities unveiled their plan in December, their proposals barely changed anything, the commission concluded on Thursday, finding their proposal “does not offer sufficient health protections for ratepayers.”
The commission had set a May 1 deadline for the new rules. Utilities missed it, and consumer advocates filed emergency motions to force action.
As another stretch of dangerous heat gripped the state, the California Public Utilities Commission wrote stronger rules itself. In a 4-0 vote, the commission lowered the temperature at which utilities must stop shutting off power to delinquent customers, from 100 to 90 degrees, and ordered utilities to adopt a more protective, region-specific heat standard within six months.
A battle to define extreme heat
During a record heat wave two years ago — the hottest July in California history — The Utility Reform Network, a consumer group, asked the utilities commission to revisit its definition of extreme heat. The group’s emergency request argued that “heat kills more people directly than any other weather-related hazard.”
The rules already barred electric utilities from disconnecting residential customers for nonpayment if forecasted temperatures soared above 100 degrees within 72 hours.
But a single statewide threshold, the group argued, didn’t account for how differently Californians experience heat depending on where they live.
