CALIFORNIA — Utility giant Pacific Gas and Electric Company has formulated a new plan it hopes will reduce the impacts of future wildfire risk-prompted power shutoffs like the ones it began implementing on a large scale last year.
PG&E’s submitted its 2020 Wildfire Mitigation Plan to the California Public Utilities Commission on Friday, laying out a host of changes it proposes making to future blackouts like those that affected millions of its customers in 2019.
The utility says it will install 592 automated “sectionalizing devices” on its power lines to bring the number of customers affected by outages down. It also plans on adding 23 switches to keep more of its larger transmission lines powered on during a shutoff, and increasing the number of “microgrids” it operates to keep electricity in certain areas. Last year, PG&E revved up temporary grid power to four towns in California—including Angwin and Calistoga—and has said it will expand that project this year.
PG&E also hopes to have 241 miles of line “hardened” this year, which can involve replacing lines entirely, installing new poles, or putting lines underground.
The utility said it will ratchet up the resources it uses to check lines after a blackout in order to turn power back on more quickly, in response to recently proposed guidelines from the CPUC that would require re-energization within 24 hours after an “all clear” is issued following outage-inducing weather. PG&E’s goal for turning the power back on to customers after a blackout was 48 hours in 2019. The 2020 proposed plan states its new “target” is to have 98 percent of affected customers re-energized within 12 “daylight hours” after severe weather passes.
To accomplish this goal, the utility plans to expand its helicopter fleet from 35 to 65 and begin using two fixed-wing aircrafts equipped with infrared cameras to allow inspections to happen at night. More field crews will be sent out to inspect and repair lines from the ground, the utility said.
The utility’s plan also includes upping its weather monitoring capabilities. With 626 weather stations already installed, PG&E said it will increase that number to 1,300 by 2021 and have 600 high-definition weather cameras installed by 2022.
The 2020 plan will make PG&E’s blackouts “smarter, smaller and shorter,” the utility said. The plan has yet to be approved, and may be altered, by the CPUC, which is expected to weigh in on it later this year.
Information was not immediately available from the utility on how the plan would affect Lake County specifically. Some local government officials weighed in Monday on the prospect of changes to how PG&E conducts its wildfire risk outages.
“The (transmission) switches and all sounds great,” said Clearlake City Manager Alan Flora, adding that he can’t know how beneficial the new plan will be for Lake County until he has more information. Last year, he said, communication was the biggest single deficiency. “They had a specific plan…but they kept changing the plan throughout the season,” Flora said. Local governments wouldn’t know what was happening from outage to outage, he noted, making it difficult to inform the public.
“There seem to be several steps in the right direction,” Flora said of PG&E’s 2020 plan. “But without seeing more detail about how that’s going to impact us locally…we’re withholding judgement until we see how it lays out on the ground.”
Lake County District 3 Supervisor E.J. Crandell agreed that communication from the utility needs to be improved this year. “They tell us (about shutoff details) at the last minute,” said Crandell. “They at least need to give us more information.”
Crandell said more “community resource centers”—PG&E-operated temporary facilities that provided amenities like electric device charging and bottled water to those affected by outages last year—are also needed in Lake County. “We need one in each area,” he said.
As many as four resource centers were operational during PG&E’s blackouts last October in Lake County. A list included in PG&E’s recent plan indicates that seven locations in the county have entered into agreements with the utility that would allow them to be used as CRCs this year.
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February 11, 2020 at 09:01PM
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PG&E submits new wildfire power shutoff plan to the state - Lake County Record-Bee
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