The utilities’ extreme plan to stop the fires: Turn off the power

A growing number of utilities are resorting to an extreme measure to prevent their equipment from causing catastrophic fires: turning off the power.

Electric companies that serve about 24 million homes and businesses in the fire-prone western U.S. now have plans to preemptively cut power during dangerous fire conditions, according to an analysis of data compiled by Stanford University researchers. However, proactive outages run counter to the primary mission of power companies, which is to keep the lights on. And that angers customers and officials.

Lawsuits — and the billions of dollars in damage claims that come with them — are a growing concern among utilities, said Michael Wara, who directs the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University.

“Utilities now fear that if they don’t have these programs in place, they will be found guilty and potentially recklessly negligent,” Wara said.

The companies say shutdowns are sometimes necessary to keep communities safe as longer droughts and more intense heat waves increase fire risks in their service territories. Many also change the settings of power lines that run through dry ground so that they shut down quickly when branches hit them. This reduces the chance of sparks, but some customers have experienced dozens of outages over the course of several months.

The measures come amid another active wildfire season in California, which has already burned more than 1 million acres, fueled by warm weather that has left the land parched.

While California power companies were the first to shut down their lines during dangerous wildfires a few years ago, others from Hawaii to Texas will now implement the tactic after being blamed for large fires. Intentional outages can last for days because crews must inspect power lines for damage before turning on power after fire conditions pass.

“It’s a tough decision you have to make every time you turn off the power, but then you think about the greater good and the risk reduction you’re doing,” said Erik Takayesu, a former Southern California Edison executive. , who oversaw the shutdown of that utility. program and now advises Hawaiian Electric.

Intentionally shutting down a service essential to everyday life presents serious operational challenges for utilities. Companies must coordinate with first responders, critical care units, and provide sufficient warning to customers.

In April, utility conglomerate Xcel Energy Inc. faced backlash after preemptively cutting power to about 55,000 customers in the Boulder, Colo., area for two days during an intense storm. The city lost power to its street lights, emergency operations center, jail and homeless shelter. Colorado’s governor later called for a state investigation.

Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett said residents received just a few hours’ notice before Xcel began turning off the lights. The city came close to having to dump raw sewage into nearby Boulder Creek after Xcel initially shut off power to a sewage treatment plant, Brockett said.

“The lack of notice was the biggest challenge,” he said.

The multi-day outage meant spoiled food for the Community Food Share near Boulder. The food bank had to throw away about 2,000 pounds of prepared food, cheese, milk and meat, said Trevor Bosetti, the food bank’s manager. Xcel announced the impending power outage Friday night and then shut down service Saturday afternoon, leaving his organization little time to find backup generators. However, he said: “I absolutely understand why they chose to do this.”

Xcel made a $50,000 donation to Community Food Share after the outage to cover its losses and pay for a backup generator, Bosetti said. The company also promised to do a better job of notifying customers in advance of the upcoming shutdown and promised more coordination with local officials and emergency agencies.

Utilities say the extreme measures have been shown to reduce ignitions during storms. They also aim to reduce their size and scope by installing weather monitoring devices and other tools that can isolate the areas of greatest risk. The companies say there will be less need for power outages over time as they strengthen their grids by installing stronger poles, burying power lines and adding protective covering to exposed conductors.

Concerns about legal liability intensified after a June 2023 jury verdict against PacifiCorp, a utility unit owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in recent years, jurors have found PacifiCorp negligent for failing to turn off power during high winds that fueled the 2020 Labor Day wildfires in western parts of Oregon. PacifiCorp, which appealed, was ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages related to the fires and could face hundreds of millions more.

PacifiCorp, which operates in six western states, said it has preemptively cut power four times since 2022 in parts of its territory during periods of high winds and dry conditions.

“In extreme weather, we are often faced with a choice between a safe or reliable system,” said Ryan Flynn, president of Pacific Power, a unit of PacifiCorp that operates in Washington, Oregon and California. “In this scenario, we choose safety over reliability.”

Xcel operates throughout the Midwest and Texas. The company is facing lawsuits over its role in the 2021 Marshall Fire near Boulder, and its Texas company said a downed power pole started the largest fire in state history in February, the Smokehouse Creek fire.

“We absolutely learned from the Marshall and Smokehouse Creek fires,” said Michael Lamb, senior vice president of customer delivery operations. “We also learned from the California utilities. All these events shape what we will do in the future.”

Hawaiian Electric implemented its preemptive power shutdown fire prevention program in July after the company faced dozens of lawsuits alleging negligence for failing to turn off power during an August 2023 wind storm , which led to the deadly wildfires in Maui. The utility company, which has not admitted liability, agreed in August to pay $2 billion of a $4 billion tentative settlement reached to resolve damage claims from the disaster. Hawaiian Electric has not yet preemptively disconnected customers.

PG&E Corp., which went into bankruptcy after sparking deadly fires several years ago, says it has been more judicious in adopting intentional outages since the practice began in 2018. The utility instituted blackouts in the fall of 2019, which affected approximately 2 million customers. , forced businesses and schools to close and left transportation officials scrambling at the last minute to keep road tunnels open.

Since then, PG&E has installed more than 2,000 AI-enabled weather stations and high-definition cameras that help utility officials isolate the parts of its system that would be most vulnerable to damage during hot, dry winds. PG&E has also installed devices on its network that allow outages to be more isolated and affect fewer customers.

So far this year, the company has cut power three times, impacting a total of about 11,500 customers, including an outage last week in parts of five Northern California counties.

But the company’s decision to rely on fast-moving settings in areas of high fire risk has led to more disruptions. The settings allow the power to be automatically cut in a tenth of a second when a line is hit by an object. So far this year, the program has resulted in about 1.3 million customer outages ranging from minutes to days, according to data PG&E provided to state regulators. PG&E says it is working to reduce these outages through efforts such as cutting overhead branches and installing power line guards.

Gayle Howey, 72, who lives in a community nestled among the oaks in the Sierra Nevada foothills, said she experienced more than twenty power outages in two months last summer.

“It was happening two or three times a week during the hottest part of the day,” Howey said. “It was ridiculous.” Howey, who cares for her disabled daughter, said she ended up spending $5,000 on a new generator.

PG&E said 92 percent of its up to 1.8 million customers in areas with fast travel settings are experiencing two outages or fewer.

“Ultimately, it’s all about wildfire safety,” said Mark Quinlan, senior vice president of fire, emergency and operations for PG&E. “We are trying to prevent ignitions that can turn into catastrophic fires. So we understand there’s an inconvenience…but we’re working very hard to make the reliability experience better and better every year.”

Top photo: Workers plan a shutdown at the PG&E Emergency Operations Center last week in Vacaville, California.

Copyright 2024 Bloomberg.

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Catastrophe Natural disasters Fire