OAKLAND — After reporting flat profits and reduced electricity and gas revenue in its second quarter, PG&E now has its sights set on lowering customer bills, according to its CEO.
The investor-owned utility posted a profit of $521 million during its April-through-June second quarter of 2025, up 0.2% from $520 million in profits for the same quarter a year ago, the company reported Thursday.
“We’ve stabilized bills over the past year and expect them to be down in 2026,” PG&E CEO Patricia Poppe said in connection with the financial results.
Electricity operations revenue totaled $4.41 billion in the second quarter of 2025, which was down 1% from the second quarter of 2024, PG&E reported. Gas operations revenue totaled $1.49 billion in the second quarter, a decline of 2.9% from the same time period a year ago.
During the second quarter of this year, the utility filed a general rate case covering the years 2027 through 2030. The proposal represents the smallest percentage increase that the company has filed with state regulators in a decade.
PG&E believes monthly bills will be flat this year and should decline in 2026. The utility also suggests that the general rate case will lead to bills that will be flat in 2027 compared with 2025.
Also in the second quarter, the company re-licensed its Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo County. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined that the controversial and closely scrutinized electricity generator can operate safely for the next 20 years.
The utility also recently constructed 32 miles of underground power lines and 103 miles of strengthened poles and covered power lines in high wildfire-risk areas. In 2025 and 2026, PG&E intends to construct 700 miles of underground power lines.
During the second quarter this year, PG&E’s pipeline to power up data centers has increased to 10 gigawatts of electricity.
The tech industry, hungry for massive data processing and storage to handle artificial intelligence technologies, has been pressing for the development of new data centers that require large amounts of power.
PG&E believes that if it can provide increased electricity capacity to meet the demand, it could also reduce monthly bills for existing residential customers. A demand for 10 gigawatts of data center electricity could lower bills by 10% or more, PG&E estimated.
In a recent interview with this news organization, Poppe compared the increased demand dynamic by using the analogy of people sharing a pizza who can reduce the per-slice cost if they can coax more people to share.
“It’s sharing the electricity resource across a bigger user base,” Poppe said. “When we share the grid with more customers, we can lower the cost for everyone else, especially when we have excess capacity on the electric grid, which we do.”
