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- Oct 17, 2011
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Edison neglected maintenance of its aging transmission lines before the Jan. 7 fires.
- Edison failed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars authorized for transmission line maintenance and upgrades before January’s fires while continuing to bill customers for the work.
- Edison’s aging transmission lines are suspected of igniting two January fires, including the Eaton fire that killed 19 people and destroyed over 9,000 homes in Altadena.
- After the fires, Edison accelerated repairs. It denies it fell behind on maintenance.
While it spent heavily in recent years to reduce the risk that its smaller lines would ignite fires, Edison fell behind on work and inspections it told regulators it planned on its transmission system, where some structures were a century old, according to documents.
Jill Anderson, the utility’s chief operating officer, told regulators at an August meeting that the company replaced components prone to failure on a certain transmission line after Jan. 7. Edison later confirmed she was referring to equipment on the line running through Sylmar [where the smaller Hurst fire also started in January and a deadly fire 6 years ago].
According to a report Edison filed in April, the company did not spend hundreds of millions of dollars on transmission system work that regulators had authorized from 2021 to 2024.
Among the shortfalls was $270 million to fix thousands of deficiencies found more than a decade ago where its transmission lines hang too close to the ground, the report said. Also unspent was $38.5 million authorized for transmission operating maintenance and an additional $155 million for capital maintenance.
In 2021, the commission’s Public Advocates Office warned that Edison wasn’t completing maintenance and upgrades that the utility said was “critical and necessary” and was authorized to bill to customers.
Edison had been under-spending on that work since 2018, staff at the Public Advocates Office wrote. They urged regulators to investigate, saying that “risks to the public are not addressed” and customers may be owed a refund.
Edison neglected maintenance of its aging transmission lines before the Jan. 7 fires. Now it’s trying to catch up
Southern California Edison began charging customers for hundreds of millions of dollars of maintenance on its aging transmission lines that regulators approved but it did not actually do in the four years before the Eaton fire, according to state documents.
www.latimes.com
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