San Onofre power plant
A couple of years ago, Southern California Edison had Mitsubishi build and install new generators for its San Onofre nuclear power plant. The two companies worked together both on the design and implementation of the project, yet two years later, the generators failed and the whole plant had to be shuttered. Thus, the $680 million Edison paid for those generators ended up being almost entirely wasted. Take a moment to weep for Edison's management and investors.
Or don't, because Edison doesn't think it or its investors should have to suffer the indignity of losing out on a bet.
Edison is asking the [California Public Utilities Commission] to allow it to recover about $2 billion for its capital expenditures alone through 2017, including a return on its capital investment of more than 5.5%. The PUC would have to decide how to apportion that sum between ratepayers and shareholders.
Got it? Edison wants ratepayers to pay for cost of the f'd up generators, the cost of building the plant itself,
and, for good measure, a five percent profit to top it all off. And why would the utility ask for something this crazy?
[I]t's leaving little doubt that, regardless of what it's able to recover [from lawsuits against Mitsubishi], it wants its shareholders and its Wall Street investors to be "made whole" financially.
Pretty sweet, huh? You screw the pooch, but rather than holding company executives accountable by firing them, or at least taking away their corporate jet for a weekend, they instead demand that government bail them out. Too rich to fail, apparently.
To the state's credit, California appears unwilling to bail them out. But it takes a special kind of moxie to demand not just ratepayer restitution for your boondoggle, but a profit from your incompetence.