Let's be clear about what we're dealing with here. PG&E is a company that emerged from bankruptcy after its equipment sparked the deadliest wildfire in California history, that has been convicted of federal crimes, that operates under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor, and that still — somehow — manages to leave tens of thousands of customers sitting in the dark with alarming regularity.

This is a utility that has raised rates repeatedly, citing the need for infrastructure improvements and wildfire safety upgrades. Californians have dutifully paid those higher bills. So where exactly is all that money going? Because it's clearly not going toward the kind of grid reliability that residents of a first-world state should be able to take for granted.

The fundamental problem is one of accountability — or rather, the complete absence of it. PG&E operates as a regulated monopoly. You can't switch providers. You can't take your business elsewhere. You pay what they tell you to pay, and in return, you get service that would embarrass a developing nation. It's the worst of both worlds: a private company with none of the competitive pressure that makes private companies good, propped up by a regulatory framework that protects it from consequences.

If California's leaders were serious about energy reliability, they'd be exploring ways to inject actual competition into the utility market, or at the very least holding PG&E to enforceable performance standards with real teeth. Instead, we get press releases, rate hikes, and another evening lit by candlelight.

Thirty thousand customers without power isn't a freak event. It's a feature of a broken system that nobody in Sacramento seems interested in fixing.