California's ratepayer advocate has forecast that typical PG&E customers could be paying $840 more per year by 2030 — a projection the utility flatly disputes, and one that directly contradicts a promise its own CEO made to Bay Area residents last spring.

The California Public Utilities Commission's Public Advocates Office, the state's independent consumer watchdog for utility customers, projects household PG&E bills could jump by $444 annually in 2027 and balloon to $840 more per year by 2030. PG&E chief executive Patti Poppe has staked her credibility on the opposite claim, and the utility's own estimates are far more modest — but the gap between the two forecasts is wide enough that Bay Area ratepayers face real uncertainty about what their monthly bills will look like in four years.

In spring 2025, PG&E chief executive Patti Poppe made a personal appeal to the San Francisco Chronicle. Standing near a crew replacing a power pole in Ingleside, she flipped through a notebook of hand-drawn charts and made her pitch directly: electricity bill relief was coming, she said, and customers would be spared from the kind of sharp increases that had hit in recent years.

"I'm begging you," Poppe told the Chronicle. "Tell the story: Bills will be flat."

Now, roughly a year later, that promise is being contested by the state's own consumer watchdog.

The California Public Utilities Commission's Public Advocates Office — an independent office housed at the CPUC whose mission is to advocate for the lowest possible utility bills for Californians — has estimated that typical PG&E residential households could see their bills rise by $444 annually in 2027. By 2030, the office projects those customers could be paying $840 more per year compared to current levels. If accurate, that would outpace the sticker shock of 2024, when average PG&E households paid roughly $443 more than the prior year — itself a painful increase driven by catastrophic wildfire costs, inflation, and a series of rate approvals that put California electricity bills among the highest in the country outside Hawaii.

PG&E disputes the watchdog's math. The company estimates its bills will rise by $128 annually for the average household with combined gas and electric service in 2027 — roughly $10 a month — followed by increases of $119 in 2028, $126 in 2029, and $133 in 2030. The utility notes that bills actually fell modestly in early 2026: average combined residential bills were $285 in January 2026, down from $295 in January 2025, with much of that difference driven by natural gas prices outside the company's control.

Mike Gazda, a PG&E spokesperson, told the Chronicle the Public Advocates Office appeared to be using "simple math" to translate revenue requests into customer rates, failing to account for the phaseout of temporary wildfire cost measures and the company's efforts to reduce operating expenses.

But the watchdog's office pushed back firmly on that framing. Mary Flannelly, spokesperson for the Public Advocates Office, said in a statement to the Chronicle that PG&E and other utilities have "veered too far away" from the central budget process — which undergoes significant scrutiny and public review — and have increasingly sought rate increases through procedures designed to be used "infrequently and for truly unanticipated costs."

"The overall trend is upward and will continue to outpace inflation," Flannelly said.

The dispute hinges on a structural question about how PG&E seeks regulatory approval for spending. The company is currently asking the CPUC permission to collect approximately $1.2 billion more from customer bills next year. The Public Advocates Office's concern is not just about the size of that ask, but about the procedural path utilities have been using to seek rate increases — carving around the more rigorous general rate case process.

PG&E has been blamed by state investigators for wildfires in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021, and the costs of settling those liabilities, upgrading infrastructure, and hardening the grid against future fires have pushed the utility's rates to levels that now rank as the most expensive among California's three investor-owned utilities. Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric, the other two major investor-owned utilities in the state, operate under similar pressures.

For Bay Area households already strained by some of the highest housing costs in the nation, the stakes of this regulatory dispute are concrete. If the Public Advocates Office projection proves correct, a family paying $285 a month today could be paying closer to $355 a month by 2030. PG&E's own more optimistic model would put the same family at around $330.

The CPUC will ultimately decide how much PG&E can collect — but the gap between the utility's own forecast and the state's consumer watchdog is a signal that the next rate cycle is likely to be contested.