Here's a fun paradox: PG&E can't maintain its existing infrastructure well enough to prevent 120,000 customers from losing power, and it can't process upgrades fast enough for homeowners trying to modernize their own electrical systems. It's the worst of both worlds — a utility that fails going and coming.

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.