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The biggest-spending utility company in the U.S. is California's Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Reason: it has to expand furiously to keep up with the gas and electricity needs of the fastest-growing state. Last week, in his annual report, P. G. & E.'s President James Byers Black told how fast the company has grown. Since the end of World War II, P. G. & E. has spent a phenomenal $385,000 a day on expansion. Last month, it spent its billionth postwar dollar--and is still far from finished. It will go on spending at the rate of $385,000 a day until it has spent another $500 million.

Utilityman Black, the company's president since 1935 (and Shirley Temple's father-in-law), has had to keep up with the needs of California's 46 northern counties, where he sells power to half of the 5,500,000 people. He has also had to fight the threat of public power from the great Central Valley Project, which includes Shasta Dam. As part of his grand plan, Black has added ten new power plants, 200,000 miles of new transmission lines, 15,000 additional miles of distribution lines, and a 500-mile pipeline from Arizona that added 300 million cubic feet of natural gas daily to P. G. & E.'s supply of 400 million cubic feet. As a result, gross revenues, only $92 million when Black took over, last year hit $300 million.

While the public-power-minded Bureau of Reclamation had hoped that municipalities would set up their own systems and buy power from Shasta Dam, P. G. & E. is still Shasta's biggest customer. The company has kept its rates so low that few communities have shown any inclination to go into the electric business.

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