SCE Tells Gov It Needs Up To $925 Million From Ratepayers To Underground Lines In Malibu and Altadena
Written by 991KBU on April 12, 2025
It will cost Southern California Edison ratepayers between $850 million and $925 million to underground 90 miles of lines in Malibu, plus 40 miles in Altadena, the company announced Friday.
The company released a letter it has sent to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a letter that did not mention that the company is guaranteed a profit of 11 percent on that pass-through expense.
And it will be up to local ratepayers to pay to underground their lines from the street to their meters, SCE said. The company estimates it will cost each property owner between $8,000 and $10,000 to trench from the new underground cables at the property line, to the customer’s electrical panel. Some houses may need new panels to accept underground feeds, a considerable expense.
The letter, signed by SCE president Pedro J. Pizarro, says the company “urgently seeks additional assistance in identifying and accessing federal, state and philanthropic funds to support the rebuilding plan and defray customer interconnection costs.”
Pizarro’s letter says Malibu residents have been heard by the company, voicing “the need to underground, including undergrounding beyond the Palisades burn scar due to the city’s high fire risk and PSPS experience.” Malibu has an astronomical rate of intentional blackouts in high winds, called PSPS by SCE.
“Frustrations include a history of prolonged impacts from PSPS, extended outages affecting communications and evacuation notices and disproportionate impacts on seniors,” the utility president noted.
Pizarro also told the governor that Malibu customers “also emphasized the need to underground telecommunication utilities alongside electric circuits, with some concerned about signing easements without assurances of this integration.”
The letter to the governor does not represent a change in SCE policies, but instead is a restatement of the financial impacts from undergrounding as the California Public Utilities Commission considers the company’s rate hike requests.
“Most of this scope was already targeted for undergrounding as part of SCE’s Wildfire Management Program, and reflected in SCE’s pending 2025 General Rate Case (rate hike request),” Pizarro says in his letter.
“The work has been accelerated during the rebuild.”
Several miles over overhead lines have been added to the undergrounding project in areas with severe damage, for example, along Pacific Coast Highway,” Pizarro wrote. “A small section of High Fire Risk Area (lines) in the Palisades Fire burn scar is not included in the undergrounding plan due to landslide risk.
“SCE has already rebuilt this area using overhead infrastructure with covered conductor.”
Although SCE makes money on undergrounding, the telecommunications companies lose money, as they do not recover their extra costs from the monthly charges that they charge: a $30 a month Internet account is $30 no matter if the line is put underground.
The CPUC has not required communications companies like ATT, Crown Castle, Frontier and Verizon to put their thick cables underground, even if SCE has plans to dig trenches. SCE is offering to allow the communications companies to share trenches, but it is not clear if SCE will charge for that.
“SCE’s CPUC-approved Tariff Rule 16 generally requires customers to pay the cost to interconnect their properties with SCE’s grid, including trenching and panel conversion to support underground service extensions. Costs can be significant, while this may be covered by insurance for insured damaged homes, it would be out of pocket for many,” Pizarro noted.
In its current rate case before the CPUC, Edison was already asking ratepayers to pay to place about 600 miles of lines underground by 2028.
SCE has about 17,000 miles of distribution circuits in high fire risk areas, about 7,000 miles of those are underground, according to the company.
