PG&E pays net $20M fine for website breakdown during power shut-off

State regulators fined Pacific Gas and Electric Co. $106 million for flawed implementation of a program that cuts off electricity to power lines to prevent them from causing wildfires during dangerous conditions.

The net penalty assessed by the California Public Utilities Commission is $20 million because it is offset by $86 million in bill credits PG&E provided customers at the direction of Gov. Gavin Newsom. The major violation was that the company's website detailing information about the power shut-off was not functioning during the outage.

"PG&E's violations put the health of many customers at risk and made an already stressful and fraught situation significantly worse," commission Administrative Law Judge Marcelo L. Poirier wrote. "Many customers struggled to prepare for and endure the de-energization events due to often inaccurate, unavailable and confusing information from PG&E."

The utility said in a statement that it "fell short of what our customers expect and deserve."

"We continue to listen to our customers and act on what we hear," the statement read. "We have incorporated feedback from customers, from local, state and tribal officials, and from other wildfire safety experts."

-- Winston Cho