PG&E new-business process improvements getting results

Business Journals

3 days ago

California now claims the world's fourth-largest economy. The Bay Area, with its robust business community, is a key regional driver of the Golden State's global economic status.
And PG&E, in turn, is here to help the Bay Area continue its tremendous contributions to the state's economy while maintaining a safe, reliable and clean energy system at the lowest cost to customers.
To serve that goal, we've made huge progress in a vital part of our business. Today, our Service Planning & Design team is connecting more new customers than ever to our electric grid.
We set a goal in 2024 to connect 9,000 new-business customers throughout PG&E's service area. We delivered way beyond that, completing a company-record 13,640 new-business connections last year. That means thousands of new homes, new and expanded businesses and clean energy projects across our service area.
In PG&E's Bay Area Region, we completed more than 3,600 new-business connections in 2024, including:
2,438 residential projects
406 commercial projects
223 electric vehicle charging points
We're thrilled to have helped bring these and other projects to life for our 1.8 million electric customers in the Bay Area.
But we're especially proud of how these efforts are helping decarbonize our housing and transportation sectors. Through our new-business connections, we're supporting San Francisco's Climate Plan, which calls for a shift to 100% renewable electricity for buildings and vehicles by 2040.
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A terrific example is our work to energize Electrify America's indoor EV charging station at 928 Harrison St. in San Francisco. This ambitious project with 20 hyper-fast chargers uses 3.6 megawatts of power. As the nation's first all-indoors charging station, it offers customer lounges with food and beverage vending machines, complimentary high-speed Wi-Fi and 24/7 monitoring and security.
Our 'One PG&E' effort across multiple teams, in constant coordination with Electrify America, helped us deliver the company's flagship charging station in February 2024—three months ahead of schedule. The station opened to tremendous success, with more than 8,000 customers in its first month alone.
And we're already building on our progress in 2025.
We completed 895 new-business connections in the first quarter of this year. That's up 25.7% compared to the 712 connections we completed in the first quarter of 2024.
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Among those new-business customers is Revel. The developer of public fast-charging EV stations opened its first station outside New York in March, at 199 Erie St. in San Francisco's Mission District. Revel plans to begin construction this year on seven more fast-charging sites with a combined 125 charging points across the Bay Area.
PG&E's new Flex Connect program will help Revel meet the demand. Flex Connect lets customers connect to our grid more quickly without having to wait for upgrades to electric infrastructure. Revel's charging station near San Francisco International Airport is using Flex Connect.
In fact, a report earlier this year from the Environmental Defense Fund cited PG&E as a leader in flexible connections.
This type of innovative approach to connecting new customers will be key to helping California meet its economic and climate goals.
That's why we've spent more than two years talking to customers and industry groups to better understand the needs of our new-business customers. The feedback we've received continues to transform our new-business processes.
Our partnership with the California Building Industry Association is one great example.
We signed a memorandum of understanding with the association in July 2023 to improve how we work with builders and developers. In monthly meetings with association members, we talk about how we're doing—and how we can keep up our progress.
With the association's help, we've set up systems to schedule construction work faster; escalate issues on complicated projects; and allow interim power connections where there are long lead times for new service.
We also launched a New Business Program Management Office to focus full-time on improving our processes.
Those efforts have paid off for our customers: The six-month design backlog of early 2023 fell to less than a month by the end of 2024. Improvements to the application process cut the number of required documents by more than half.
We will continue to work with lawmakers, regulators and other stakeholders on process improvements to connect more new customers. We're especially excited about opportunities to connect new customers across the Bay Area to help the region sustain its vibrant growth trajectory.
We also look forward to working with you as we strive to meet the economic and climate goals of California and its residents.