San Francisco leaders have been thinking about creating the city's own independent, public version of PG&E for a while now, and the utility's bankruptcy has perhaps provided the perfect opportunity. Now the city has offered PG&E $2.5 billion to purchase its San Francisco electrical grid.

Mayor London Breed in January asked the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) to explore the feasibility of doing just this, and the resulting preliminary report arrived in May. Now, as ABC 7 reports, the city has made an offer for PG&E's electrical lines, with a view toward both becoming carbon neutral and potentially offering electricity to SF residents at a reduced rate.

As Supervisor Matt Haney said in a comment to the station, "This is a chance to own our own grid and not have a private company have a monopoly on it."

As the Chronicle notes, such a transaction would be "a turning point" for the embattled utility, whose roots in San Francisco go back 150 years. But it wouldn't even be the biggest government-owned utility in the state — Los Angeles and Sacramento each have city-run utilities of their own.

Also, the deal would not rid us of PG&E completely — the deal is for the electrical grid only, and the city would not be buying any of PG&E's gas lines.

Cash for the purchase would come from a municipal power bond that voters agreed last year the city could use, and the debt would be paid off through revenue from electrical bills.

The city already provides electricity to thousands of customers through the Clean Power SF program, established by the Board of Supervisors in 2013 under Mayor Ed Lee, though he opposed it. That program purchases power from renewable sources and transmits it over PG&E's lines.

In a statement to ABC 7, PG&E said, "PG&E has been a part of San Francisco since the company's founding... and while we don't believe municipalization is in the best interests of our customers and stakeholders, we are committed to working with the city."

State and federal regulators would still have to approve the transaction, if PG&E takes SF up on the offer.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk not-so-quietly unveiled a new product, the Powerwall Tesla Home Battery, last week, that stands to change the way everyone thinks about solar power and sustainable energy. Until now, putting photovoltaic panels on your roof was a nice, if expensive, thing to do to help off-set your energy costs, but hardly posed a viable solution to our country's dependence on fossil fuels. Now, with batteries produced at Tesla's Gigafactory that can store up to 10 kilowatt-hours of power, the energy your solar panels absorb can actually be banked in a practical way to power your home all night long. And as Popular Science reports, Tesla's Powerwalls are very affordable compared to other similar products on the market — $3,000 to $3,500, vs. $30,000 for Bosch's solar battery solution.

Both models, the 7 kWh and 10 kWh versions, weigh in at 220 pounds and are four feet long and almost three feet wide, but merely 7 inches thick. They're expected to start shipping this summer. For reference, it only takes 0.1 kWh per day to light a room, and 1 kWh can charge your cell phone 278 times over.

"The issue with existing batteries is that they suck," said Musk at the unveiling on Friday. He says we should be using our "handy fusion reactor in the sky called the sun" in order "to change the entire energy infrastructure of the world to zero carbon."

As Vice surmises, Musk is sure to piss off major power companies like PG&E as his product takes off, because until now customers who have already installed solar arrays have had no real way to off-set their energy bills with the excess power their solar panels produce, or to store that power for their own use. The Powerwall now makes it possible to disconnect completely from the power grid, and to power your own home during outages.

Here in California there are rebates available and tax credits that make installing solar panels even more affordable. And given that the price of one of these Powerwall batteries is equivalent two just two years (or less) of electrical bills for a lot of people, this could be a game-changer.

Below, Musk's tweet teasing the battery, and connecting it to his sustainable car business.

Although last week's test on the American tap water by chemists claims to have detected the sex hormone estradiol -- found such vertebrate animals as birds, reptiles, and fish -- a more recent test conducted by the American Waterworks Association Research Foundation, says that San Francisco's "best tasting" H20 has come up sparkling clean.

The Gate reports that our tap water, which is really quite tasty compared to, say, the waters of Southern California or elsewhere, has traces of neither pharmaceuticals nor chemical solvents that were previously reported. It seems that "[t]he mistake apparently resulted from confusion over the waterworks foundation's laboratory test results conveyed by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to the Associated Press."

This should come as no surprise to Bay Area residents. It's not shocking that most of us are shocked after our first taste from the tap here. While most cities and states have to drink treated water, San Francisco has "bragging rights over pure Hetch Hetchy Reservoir water surrounded by nearly 500 square miles of Yosemite Valley wilderness." Snap.

Without providing an answer for firing San Francisco Public Utilities Commission chief Susan Leal, the SFPUC officially sacked her this morning after a nine-minute closed door City Hall meeting. As part of her severance package, she will receive a delightful $400,000. The former city treasurer was asked to pack up and get the hell out last December as part of Newsom's second-term staff cuts.

Although word is she had to go either for not smooching the Mayor's ass enough (she ran against him for mayor), or because she was pushing for public power, even Leal herself has yet to hear a reason for her dismissal. According to the Gate:

In recent weeks, Leal's allies on the Board of Supervisors have rallied in support of her, lobbying the mayor to save her job and attempting to block Newsom's appointments to the PUC board. Leal was not present for this morning's vote, but following the meeting she said she still has not been given a reason for being fired. She plans to continue working for another 30 days..."I've gotten to the point where I could make myself crazy trying to figure out why," Leal said. "I just look at the work I've done at the agency and know that we've done some remarkable things."

That? Is cold.

Anyway, after being "thrown under the bus by Newsom," the mayor will most likely have City Controller Ed Harrington fill her spot.

Chin up, Leal. We here at SFist wish you all the best.

We like one of the SFGate commenters' take on the sitch: hit by a car "after getting thrown under the bus by Newsome [sic]." We hit the recommend button on that one! You may recall that Newsom has been pestering Leal to resign, either because she wasn't considered a sufficiently loyal Newsomite (she ran against him for mayor), or because she was pushing for public power. You know, if Newsom actually is cleaning house for his second term, the PUC is not the place where we figured he'd start.
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Newsom's got an alibi, anyways -- he's in Iowa with Hillary Clinton -- but the message has been sent! Chris Daly, be careful out there!

Although her contract ends in 2009, former SF Mayoral candidate and current San Francisco Public Utilities Commission chief Susan Leal might get the ax, according to Cecilia M. Vega over at the Chronicle. Her removal could kickoff a bloodbath of staff cuts by Newsom. And although her dismissal would need approval by committee, this seems like a done deal. According to the article:

Leal received a telephone call Friday evening from Newsom's chief of staff saying her services won't be needed in his second term, the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday. The call prompted Leal and the administration to begin talking about whether she will stay.

Yikes.

Once Newsom's ingénue (more or less) for spearheading efforts to cull energy in the San Francisco Bay, she also yearned for more "publicly owned sources of energy," a sentiment that went against the agendas of other members of the PUC. She heard the informal news of her probable canning while can-canning over in Paris this week at a French-sponsored water conference. She has no comment at this time.

After Newsom's famous request for open letters of resignation earlier, this seems like a start to his pruning process. The article goes on to say that Leal "has never been a true team player with the Newsom camp." So...watch your necks, Newsom naysayers.

Mere days after the head of the environmental department broke with Aaron Peskin and other city leaders on a Public Utilities Commission policy, this week he introduced a wee bit of legislation that would obliterated said department. Yoinks.

According to Wyatt Buchanan's article in today's Chronicle, cutting the department would mean the loss of 64 jobs, save its its director, Jared Blumenfeld. Blumenfeld went on to say "I was really disturbed that someone, without even phoning me, would decide to cut all these great staff people we have in the department."

Peskin's plan to get rid of the department -- which, really, he can't do seeing as how only voters can make such a decision -- got support from Gerardo Sandoval and Sophie Maxwell, prompting Blumenfeld to (correctly) assume that this strike had more to do with supporting the status quo, not the environment.

Alioto-Pier, it seems, also got in on the fun. She questioned Peskin about the move in a closed-door meeting. And, in a stellar move, Peskin replied to her, "Payback's a bitch." (Bam!) Seems he's "punishing Alioto-Pier for giving a television interview opposing Proposition A, the Muni reform measure he sponsored on November's ballot."

Wow, never a dull moment at City Hall. Well, okay, often a dull moment at City Hall, but...not this week.

What was announced was the usual first steps in any sort of big thing-- doing a study and forming a committee. So Leal announced that money is being set aside for a study and Gavin announced he was forming a committee of environmental leaders, clean energy advocates and other experts to figure this all out. What needs to be studied are where to put them, how big, and how to do it with harming all the fishies. Also probably to be hashed out is who is in charge of all this-- us or PG&E or somebody else. That debate will be where the magic happens.

Right now, the target date for a pilot program is 2009 and should cost between $5 million and $7 million dollars. Between all the inevitable in-fighting, law suits, environmental impact reports, more law suits, more environmental impact reports, price gouging, union kickbacks, and general shadiness, expect it to be more like going live around 2015 and costing $20 million.

Still, it's a pretty cool idea.

Surf's up! Two water mains on Lombard between Stockton and Powell Streets burst this morning at about 4 a.m., flooding North Beach streets. The Public Utilities Commission says it might be from the cold weather, and says if you suffered any damage to file a claim with the city. They said they should be have been able to get the water cleaned up around 10 a.m.

Hey North Beachers (a group which now includes SFist Jackson!) -- any reports? Any water damage?