Utilities Cry Out for Explainers

 Pacific Gas and Electric Company if is not careful may wind up being known as the utility joke by the bay.

 It has sustained a series of baffling missteps recently, from backing a ballot issue that exploded in its face – to failing to anticipate and head off a seemingly wacky movement out to raise alarms about the health effects of next generation meters.

It may have company in the utility miscommunications sweepstakes.

Public Service Electric and Gas thought its plan to put solar power on light poles would be about as controversial as puppies and Mother’s Day. Wrong.  The New York Times on its front page – where World Wars are announced – declared that the New Jersey utility’s solar efforts were being viewed as “eyesores.”

Which brings us to the realm of PR. Early in my career as a newspaper reporter, I saw a utility CEO use his top PR guy’s hand as an ashtray where he dropped his ash and cigarette butt before heading to a podium to speak.

Utilities better understand that the role of public relations is more than that. With companies like PG&E and PSEG getting in trouble from seemingly innocuous of efforts – like installing meters and tiny solar modules -  it is time for public relations folks of the highest caliber to be placed close to the inner sanctums of utility decision making. Their advice must be sought – and considered.

Boards of directors and executives must do a better job anticipating how a policy will be perceived publicly. When that policy is essential, the energy company early on must develop clear strategies to make sure their intentions and objectives are understood and, hopefully, then embraced.

Jeff Skilling might not be in jail today if that kind of dynamic would have been at work at Enron. David Sokol would be a lot less red-faced and spending less time with lawyers in the weeks and months ahead. And Peter Darbee would have kept his job at the utility by the bay.