Pacific Gas Electric Co

PG&E Corp.'s flagship utility reached a settlement with consumer groups on rate increases that will boost its revenue from electricity and natural gas distribution by $288 million. The Pacific Gas & Electric Co. unit and consumer groups agreed to increases that would be less than the $552 million requested by the utility in November.

A plume of chromium-tainted groundwater is once again bearing down on residents of Hinkley, Calif., where more than a decade ago an underdog battle with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spawned a multimillion-dollar settlement and the Oscar-winning film "Erin Brockovich. " FOR THE RECORD: Water contamination: An article in the Nov. 15 Section A about groundwater contamination in Hinkley in San Bernardino County referred to the substance involved, hexavalent chromium, as a heavy-metal isotope.

Hundreds of pounds of bomb-making materials and handbooks on how to build a bomb were found in a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. storage facility Thursday, and a field worker for the utility was arrested. The 44-year-old employee, Paul Madronich, was very cooperative and led investigators to more such materials at a second PG & E facility, said San Francisco police spokesman Sherman Ackerson.

A sophisticated safety inspection device required for many large natural gas pipelines couldn't be used in the San Bruno line that exploded last week because of design issues. However, the utility that owns the line said Monday it had complied with all federal testing requirements. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. officials, seeking to reassure customers, said the steel pipeline that exploded Thursday, killing at least four people, was inspected regularly. Among the tests were a comprehensive external assessment for corrosion performed in November and a leak survey that was completed in March.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. on Tuesday sold $2.9 billion worth of rate-reduction bonds, the first batch of an expected $7.4 billion by California utilities. Yield-hungry investors snapped them up. The bonds sold by the subsidiary of PG&E Corp. are backed by a special charge on electricity bills, making them less risky than bonds backed by consumer debt such as credit card payments. The new securities also offer yields about 0.03 to 0.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. plans to file a federal application to study a section of ocean off Humboldt Bay to produce electricity from the power of waves. The preliminary permit application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the first step in the possible development of the project.

County leaders are praising a bankruptcy deal that leaves Diablo Canyon nuclear plant ownership and regulatory oversight unchanged. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. will keep ownership, and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission will continue to oversee safety and security at the plant. San Luis Obispo County was concerned about PG&E's solvency to safely operate and eventually decommission the plant, assistant county counsel Jac Crawford said.

The most important thing to know about Proposition 16 on California's June ballot is that it was written and bankrolled by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for the benefit of PG&E. There'd be nothing wrong with that, necessarily, if its customers also benefited. But Prop. 16 seeks to lock them into the private utility's grasp without any realistic opportunity of ever escaping to an electricity provider with cheaper rates. And it would apply to the customers of any private -- or "investor-owned" -- utility, such as Southern California Edison or San Diego Gas & Electric.

On the face of it, nobody should find anything objectionable to the Taxpayers Right to Vote Act, a proposed initiative now awaiting certification to go on the state ballot. The measure would require a two-thirds vote by residents of a municipality to approve certain public expenditures or borrowings. It's cast as the most virtuous of good-government propositions. Or as Greg Larsen, head of the initiative's campaign committee, puts it, "Why shouldn't the people who are going to pay the bill have the right to vote on that?"

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for decades has generated power for its customers by splitting atoms, burning natural gas and capturing the force of falling water. More recently, the San Francisco utility began turning to the sun, wind, boiling geysers and even fermented cow manure to produce electricity. Now, PG&E wants to turn to outer space. A Manhattan Beach start-up called Solaren Corp.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. said Tuesday that it would spend $1.5 billion of ratepayers' money to add 500 megawatts of photovoltaic power in California, one of the largest such deals in the country. Plans call for the San Francisco utility to invest at least half of that in solar panels placed on commercial rooftops and on ground-mounted modules that PG&E would own and operate. The other half is earmarked for long-term contracts with private-sector solar companies.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has signed contracts to buy enough solar energy to power 239,000 homes a year. The utility said Thursday that it would buy 800 megawatts of renewable energy from subsidiaries of Hayward-based OptiSolar Inc. and San Jose-based SunPower Corp. The electricity will come from two large-scale solar projects to be built in San Luis Obispo County on the Central California coast. OptiSolar's 550-megawatt Topaz Solar Farm project is expected to begin delivering power in 2011.

After three years of work, an array of interest groups are poised to determine the future of more than 140,000 acres of some of California's most ecologically rich and endangered watershed lands, among the largest swaths to be preserved in decades. At stake are lands owned by Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

Calpine Corp., a major producer of geothermal power, signed contracts to supply 110 megawatts of electricity for five years to PG&E Corp.'s Pacific Gas & Electric Co. The power plant developer said the contract with the state's largest utility will generate about $40 million of annual revenue and help the company increase the amount of power sales under long-term contract.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co., California's largest utility, said Thursday that it might lower rates by $105 million next year because forward-market prices for natural gas and electricity had dropped "considerably." The company, a unit of San Francisco-based PG&E Corp., had said it was considering a rate increase of $362 million to compensate for higher costs from purchasing wholesale power. Pacific Gas & Electric's residential customers can now expect a rate decrease of about 0.

PG&E Corp., owner of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., said Friday that 2009 earnings would lag behind analyst estimates as capital spending increases and cost-cutting efforts miss forecasts. Per-share earnings, which may exclude such items as legal settlements, will be $3.15 to $3.25, the San Francisco company said in a regulatory filing. PG&E had been expected to earn $3.35 a share, based on the average of nine analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.