PG&E CEO Patti Poppe on Mitigating Fire Risk and Managing Energy Demand

Mitigating Fire Risk

• 💡 PG&E is implementing layers of protection to mitigate fire risk, starting with hardening the system.
• 🛠️ They have buried their 1,000th mile of power lines this year, achieving cost reductions of $1 million per mile through scale and efficiency.
• 📈 Ignitions were down 35% over last year, despite similar fire conditions, indicating the effectiveness of their protection layers.

Managing Energy Rates and Load Growth

• 📉 PG&E employs a simple affordable model that balances infrastructure investment with operating cost reductions to lower rates.
• ⚡ Rates have been lowered three times in the last 15 months, with further reductions planned for 2026, while earnings grow over 9% annually.
• 💡 The company is experiencing rate-reducing load growth, particularly from data centers, which pay their full freight and do not subsidize residential customers.

Data Centers and Compute Demand

• 🧠 The proximity of data centers to talent in the Bay Area is crucial for AI inference models due to latency requirements.
• 🧩 PG&E is prepared for distributed data center applications, including a site equipped for up to a gigawatt, but most applications are for 100 megawatts.
• ✅ This