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PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January, citing $30 billion in civil liability from major wildfires sparked by its equipment in 2017 and 2018, including last year's Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and incinerated most of the Northern California town of Paradise. That fire ranks as the state's deadliest on record.

Now it makes sense. I see what it going on here.

PG&E is punishing California for the 30 Billion Dollars in losses.

They figure if they just cut power during windstorms - they won't get sued again.

Now it makes sense. I see what it going on here. PG&E is punishing California for the 30 Billion Dollars in losses.

Let's start with how much PG&E loses per hour in mandatory payment to 'renewable energy sources' which they're required to buy if they need them or not. That's now hovering in the tens of millions. Plus the liability for expired food if the power is out for more than 48 hours. Plus liability for the cadre of lawyers seeking to do a class action lawsuit for PG&E shutting off the power.

Next how did they acquire this 30 billion in liabilities? From the inverse condemnation law that California passed that makes the utility WHOLLY liable for any damages if any part of the cause can be linked to them. Would the Camp fire still have consumed Paradise if it was started by a weed eater? You betcha. It was an oil soaked pile of rags waiting for a spark as the Butte County Grand Jury appropriately found in 2008 when CalFire pulled off a miracle in keeping the town from being consumed. After that fire, they reduced the main evacuation route for 80,000 people from two lanes each direction to one lane to 'calm traffic.'

But hey, California also passed laws requiring investor owned utilities to shut off power if the wind was predicted to be over 35 mph and they could not guarantee compliance with still evolving regulations as to brush and tree clearance near lines. Since they don't even know what the regulation will eventually say (and likely will continue to evolve over the next 10 years,) we can expect 12-15 years of these outages to continue.

Revenge by the utility is not the motive here, everything is to shift blame from decades of mismanagement, neglect and poor decisions from civil authorities to the evil megacorps of PG&E, SDPG&E and SCE. (Of course, CALPers (state employee retirement funds...) carefully divested themselves of all three of these investor owned utilities prior to the reverse condemnation laws taking effect...)