Let's start with the blackout. An independent investigation found that PG&E knew about high humidity levels inside the Mission substation but failed to act before the damage cascaded into a crippling December outage. One hundred and twenty thousand customers sat in the dark because the monopoly utility couldn't be bothered to fix a known problem at a critical piece of infrastructure. As one SF resident put it with pitch-perfect sarcasm: "PG&E!? But, but... They're so highly regarded!"

Meanwhile, on the residential side, homeowners trying to do the responsible thing — upgrading from 100-amp to 200-amp panels so they can install solar, heat pumps, or EV chargers — are hitting a bureaucratic wall that would make the DMV blush. The timeline for an underground panel upgrade? Eighteen months minimum, and that's if you're lucky.

One Bay Area homeowner shared their saga: "It took us about 2 years to get ours upgraded. The delay was almost entirely on PG&E's side. Took 18 months for them to dig and rewire." Another local noted that "PG&E anoints only a select few electricians to manage buried power lines," and the costs are, predictably, astronomical.

Let's connect the dots. California is aggressively pushing electrification — electric vehicles, electric stoves, electric everything. The state essentially requires homeowners to go electric. But the monopoly utility tasked with making that possible operates on a timeline measured in geological epochs. You can't mandate an all-electric future while tolerating a utility that takes two years to upgrade a single home's panel.

PG&E has no competitors. Homeowners have no alternatives. The California Public Utilities Commission — the regulatory body supposedly holding PG&E accountable — continues to approve rate hikes while the utility delivers deteriorating service.

This isn't a market failure. It's a monopoly failure, enabled by a state government that talks big on electrification while shrugging at the utility standing in the way. San Franciscans deserve better than a power company that can't keep the lights on or turn them up.