(a) At the time of approval of an electrical corporation‘s wildfire mitigation plan, the commission shall authorize the electrical corporation to establish a memorandum account to track costs incurred to implement the plan.

(b) (1) The commission shall consider whether the cost of implementing each electrical corporation’s plan is just and reasonable in its general rate case application. Each electrical corporation shall establish a memorandum account to track costs incurred for fire risk mitigation that are not otherwise covered in the electrical corporation’s revenue requirements. The commission shall review the costs in the memorandum accounts and disallow recovery of those costs the commission deems unreasonable.

(2) In lieu of paragraph (1), an electrical corporation may elect to file an application for recovery of the cost of implementing its plan as accounted in the memorandum account at the conclusion of the time period covered by the plan. If the electrical corporation files an application for cost recovery pursuant to this paragraph, the commission shall issue a proposed decision within 12 months of the filing date of the application unless the commission issues an order extending the deadline upon a finding of good cause.

(3) The chief executive officer of an electrical corporation shall certify in each general rate case application that the electrical corporation has not received authorization from the commission to recover the costs in a previous proceeding, including wildfire cost recovery applications.

(4) Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as a restriction or limitation on Article 1 (commencing with Section 451) of Chapter 3 of Part 1 of Division 1.

(Added by Stats. 2019, Ch. 79, Sec. 19. (AB 1054) Effective July 12, 2019.)