Public Utilities Commission: memorandum and balancing accounts.

Existing law vests the Public Utilities Commission with regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations and gas corporations. Existing law authorizes the commission to fix the rates and charges for every public utility and requires that those rates and charges be just and reasonable. Existing law requires the commission, whenever the commission authorizes a change in rates reflecting and passing through to customers specific changes in costs, to require a public utility to establish and maintain a balancing account to reflect the balance between the related costs and revenues. Existing law further directs the commission to authorize public utilities to establish catastrophic event memorandum accounts, as provided. Existing law authorizes each electrical corporation to establish a memorandum account to track costs incurred for wildfire risk mitigation that are unforeseen and incremental to the wildfire risk mitigation programs and activities authorized in the electrical corporation's revenue requirements, as specified. This bill would provide that it is the policy of the state that the regularly scheduled general rate case process is the preferred and primary method of establishing authorized revenue requirements for electrical corporations and gas corporations. The bill would require the commission, in exercising its ratemaking authority, to apply specified principles and requirements, including a requirement that memorandum accounts and balancing accounts, as defined, be authorized and maintained only when necessary to address costs that cannot reasonably be anticipated in the general rate case process, as provided. The bill would require each memorandum account or balancing account authorized by statute, or by the commission, before January 1, 2027, to be included and reviewed in the subsequent general rate case proceeding cycle or at a similar cyclical review interval to the general rate case proceeding, as provided. The bill would