California Regulators Lock January 1 as the Start Date for PG&E’s 2027 Rate Increase Before Deciding Its Size

The California Public Utilities Commission took up Decision D.26-10-005 at its October 14, 2026 voting meeting, granting a Pacific Gas and Electric motion filed on January 12, 2026 and fixing January 1, 2027 as the start date for the revenue requirement in the utility’s 2027 General Rate Case. The date holds even if the Commission issues its final decision on the amount later. The CPUC’s own fact sheet for the proceeding projects new rates around May 2027.

That gap is the substance of the decision. A California commercial customer begins accruing a 2027 increase on New Year’s Day whose size becomes public around the time second quarter bills arrive.

PG&E asked for $16.637 billion. The utility’s filing in Application 25-05-009 seeks a 2027 revenue requirement of $16.637 billion, which the CPUC fact sheet describes as an 8 percent increase over 2026 authorized levels. The application also requests increases of 6.1 percent in each of 2028, 2029 and 2030.

Four years of escalation, filed by the utility, in a numbered proceeding. For a commercial building owner underwriting a ten-year energy project in PG&E territory, that is a filed escalation curve in a place where most models carry a generic 3 percent assumption. It is a request, not an authorization.

Three memorandum accounts carry the gap. D.26-10-005 authorizes PG&E to track the difference between what it collects and what the Commission ultimately approves through three accounts covering gas distribution, electric, and gas transmission and storage. Interest accrues on the tracked balances at the Federal Reserve’s three-month commercial paper rate.

The mechanism is why the operative date can be settled separately from the amount. Whatever the Commission eventually authorizes is trued up to the first of the year with interest attached. The direction of that true-up is not fixed in advance: an authorized amount below the request produces a refund rather than a surcharge.

Commercial class impacts come later. How the authorized revenue requirement splits across customer classes, and how much of each class’s share lands on demand charges rather than energy charges, is settled in rate design proceedings that follow the revenue decision. The 8 percent figure describes a system-wide revenue ask, not a line on any particular commercial bill.

Rhode Island filed a 58 percent winter supply increase. The contrast with the New England mechanism is instructive on sequencing. Rhode Island Energy filed in RIPUC Docket 26-27-EL on July 22, 2026, proposing a Commercial Group Last Resort Service price of $0.16581 per kWh as a levelized charge for October 1, 2026 through March 31, 2027, against a currently effective $0.10485. The filing shows the increase as $0.06096 per kWh, a 58 percent step-up.

The underlying monthly base price swings from $0.11409 in October to $0.19654 in January. The Industrial Group, billed monthly instead of levelized, reaches $0.23642 per kWh in December. The company attributed the increase to new ISO-NE supply-constraint rules, regional market conditions, and a higher Renewable Energy Standard charge, and requested approval for effect October 1.

A posted Commission order in Docket 26-27-EL has not surfaced in public searches. The parallel docket a year earlier drew Order 25528 on October 3. Until an order appears on the docket, the 16.581 cent figure is a filed number rather than an approved one, and should be cited that way.

Two regulators arrive at their numbers on different clocks. Rhode Island prices a six-month supply period on a filing made in July. California fixes a start date in October for an amount it does not expect to set until the following spring.

Grant County PUD votes December 15. The Washington public utility district’s staff package for 2027 holds residential and small business or general service customers to a 3.5 percent increase, while putting Tier 1 rates at an average 9.5 percent and Tier 2 at an average 12.5 percent, effective April 1, 2027. The August cost-of-service draft also recommended creating Rate Schedule 20 for high density compute and Rate 21 for large high density compute, pulling data centers and cryptocurrency load out of the existing industrial schedules, and raising Tier 1 and Tier 2 industrial fixed charges by roughly 3 percent to just over 5 percent. A public meeting is set for November 10, comment closes in November, and the commission vote is scheduled for December 15.

Three filings in three regions in a single week, with commercial and industrial increases of 8 percent, 58 percent and 12.5 percent. The regional drivers differ by the utilities’ own accounts: Rhode Island is passing through winter wholesale supply conditions and a higher renewable standard charge, and Grant County is reallocating cost of service around a new large-load class. The California figure sits inside a general rate case whose cost composition the Commission has yet to rule on.

The fixed-charge component of the Grant County package is the piece least visible in the headline percentages. Fixed charges do not vary with consumption or peak demand, so a 3 to 5 percent increase in that component is recovered regardless of how a customer operates its load. Whether other utilities follow that path determines how much of a commercial bill remains addressable through operational measures at all.

The modeling takeaway. The usable output of D.26-10-005 for a commercial energy pro forma is a locked start date paired with a filed escalation curve. PG&E has put 8 percent and three years of 6.1 percent on the record. The Commission has fixed January 1 as the date from which whatever it authorizes applies. The date is settled; the size is not.

The second limit on that curve is scope. A general rate case governs a defined set of costs, and California utilities recover others through separate proceedings. Applying 8 percent to a total PG&E commercial bill therefore risks using a figure drawn from one docket against a base set by several.

The memorandum accounts begin tracking on January 1, 2027. The Commission projects new rates around May.

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