By Ivan Penn | The New York Times
Pacific Gas & Electric presided over a blackout. Now it is under the spotlight.
PG&E’s chief executive said Thursday night that the utility did a poor job in executing the blackout, even if its intentions — pre-empting wildfires caused by its equipment — were sound.
“We understand that the size and scope of this event is untenable in the long term,” the chief executive, Bill Johnson, said in a letter sent to the state’s Public Utilities Commission late Thursday. “Events such as these cannot become the status quo in California.”
Thursday was the deadline set by the commission for PG&E to answer for its performance last week and explain what it intended to do differently in the future. On Friday afternoon, Mr. Johnson and other PG&E officials will appear at a commission hearing in San Francisco at which they can expect to be aggressively questioned.
