As wildfire season ramps up, PG&E expands instant power shutoff program

As California prepares to enter the heart of wildfire season amid drought and historically dry conditions, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. said Friday that it has expanded its instant power line shutoffs to cover more high-risk areas. The Northern California utility said its safety settings turn off power to a circuit “within one-tenth of a second” of a fault, such as a tree branch falling onto a line.

Such faults linked to PG&E equipment have sparked a series of recent massive wildfires, including last year’s Dixie fire and the 2018 Camp fire, which led to felony manslaughter charges , millions of dollars in fines and a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing meant to shield the company from tens of billions of dollars in potential liabilities. After the Dixie fire, PG&E rolled out its power line shutoff program last year. With fewer than 200 circuits covered, PG&E noted an 80% reduction in ignitions in high-wildfire-threat areas reported to the California Public Utilities Commission, compared with the previous three-year average.

California The conditions that paved the way for the Dixie fire’s growth are becoming more common. After this year’s expansion, PG&E said, the program covers 1,000 circuits, 25,000 miles of distribution lines in high-risk areas and about 3 million people. So far this year, there have been 205 outages on circuits covered by the program, with an average restoration time of 3.

5 hours, the company said. To reduce outages, PG&E said it will take steps such as proactively pruning and removing vegetation around equipment in some locations. The utility also launched a new tool for customers to check whether their address may be affected by the shutoffs.

The instant shutoffs differ from public safety power outages , which are instituted during high winds and other dangerous fire conditions. In those outages, utilities such as PG&E and Southern California Edison often send out notifications of an impending shutoff to customers. Business PG&E is set to emerge from felony probation, and the judge who oversaw it slams the utility for setting wildfires.

PG&E says it is a safer company now. The expansion of the instant shutoffs comes as PG&E faces criticism over the Dixie fire, which was sparked when a 65-foot Douglas fir fell onto PG&E equipment, according to a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection report made public last week . The blaze was not discovered by a PG&E employee until 10 hours later.

The fire, the second-largest in state history, burned nearly 1 million acres in Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Tehama and Shasta counties last summer, destroyed hundreds of homes and leveled much of the town of Greenville. Cal Fire investigators said PG&E’s response “was a direct and negligent factor in the ignition of the fire. ” “Had PG&E arrived on the scene earlier, they could have detected the fault … and opened the third fuse before it had time to ignite a receptive fuel,” Cal Fire wrote in its report.

In response, PG&E said that “there was no indication of an emergency until our troubleman arrived at the scene soon after the fire had started. ”.