Utilities’ extreme plan to stop wildfires: shut off the power

Mark Chediak | (TNS) Bloomberg News

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

Electric companies serving about 24 million homes and businesses across the fire-prone U.S. West now have plans to preemptively cut electricity during dangerous fire conditions, according to an analysis of data compiled by researchers at Stanford University. The proactive blackouts, however, run counter to the power companies’ main mission — which is to keep the lights on. And that’s angering customers and officials.

Lawsuits — and the billions of dollars of damage claims that come with them — are an increasing concern among utilities, said Michael Wara, who leads 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 liable and potentially recklessly negligent,” Wara said.

The companies say shutoffs are sometimes needed in order to keep communities safe as longer droughts and more intense heat waves elevate fire risks in their service territories. Many are also changing settings on their power lines running through parched land so they shut down quickly when branches hit them. That reduces the chances of sparks, but some customers have experienced dozens of outages within a span of a few months.

The measures come amid another active wildfire season, with California already seeing more than 1 million acres burned, fueled by hot weather that’s left the terrain bone dry.

While California power companies were the first to deactivate their lines during dangerous fire weather several years ago, others from Hawaii to Texas now will deploy the tactic after they’ve been blamed for big blazes. The intentional blackouts can last days as crews must inspect power lines for damage before turning power on after the fire conditions pass.

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

Intentionally turning off an essential service for daily life poses serious operational challenges for utilities. The companies have to coordinate with first responders, critical care facilities and give enough advanced warning to customers.

In April, utility conglomerate Xcel Energy Inc. faced backlash after it preemptively cut electricity to about 55,000 customers in the Boulder, Colorado, area for two days during an intense windstorm. The city lost power to its street lights, emergency operations center, jail and homeless shelter. The Colorado Governor called for a state investigation in the aftermath.

Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett said residents got 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 cut power to a wastewater treatment plant, Brockett said.

“It was the lack of notice that was the huge challenge,” he said.

The multi-day outage meant spoiled food for the Community Food Share near Boulder. The food bank had to throw out about 2,000 pounds of prepared meals, cheese, milk and meats, said Trevor Bosetti, manager at the food bank. Xcel gave notice of the coming power cut on a Friday evening and then switched off service Saturday afternoon, leaving his organization little time to find backup generators. Yet, he said, “I absolutely understand why they chose to do it.”

Xcel made a $50,000 donation to Community Food Share after the blackout to cover its losses as well as pay for a backup generator, Bosetti said. The company also vowed to do a better job of giving customers advanced notice of the next shutoff and promised more coordination with local officials and emergency responders.

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

Worries about legal liability intensified after a jury verdict issued in June 2023 against PacifiCorp, a utility unit owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. In the first class-action case against a major utility to go to a jury trial following a series of catastrophic fires in recent years, jurors found PacifiCorp negligent for failing to turn off the power during high winds that fanned 2020 Labor Day blazes in western parts of Oregon. PacifiCorp, which has appealed, was ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars of claims tied to the wildfires and could face hundreds of millions more.

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

“In extreme weather, we are often being 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 that scenario, we are choosing safety over reliability.”

Xcel operates throughout the Midwest and Texas. The company faces lawsuits for its role in the 2021 Marshall fire near Boulder and its Texas utility said a downed power pole likely sparked the largest wildfire in state history in February, the Smokehouse Creek fire. Xcel said it doesn’t believe its equipment caused the Marshall Fire. Nevertheless, the utility is taking lessons away from the blaze that destroyed or damaged more than 1,000 homes.“We’ve absolutely learned from the Marshall and Smokehouse Creek fires,” said Michael Lamb, senior vice president of customer delivery operations. “We’ve also learned from the California utilities. All of those events shape what we do going forward.”

Hawaiian Electric put in place its preemptive power shutoff fire prevention program in July after the utility faced dozens of lawsuits alleging negligence for not turning off the power during an August 2023 windstorm that led to the deadly Maui wildfires. The utility, which hasn’t admitted liability, agreed in August to pay $2 billion out of a $4 billion a tentative settlement reached to resolve damage claims from the disaster. Hawaiian Electric hasn’t yet preemptively unplugged customers.

PG&E Corp., which was driven into bankruptcy after starting deadly wildfires several years ago, says it has been more judicious in enacting intentional shutoffs since it started the practice in 2018. The utility instituted blackouts in the fall of 2019 that impacted around 2 million customers, forced businesses and schools to shutter and left transportation officials scrambling at the last minute to keep road tunnels open.

Since then, the PG&E has installed more than 2,000 weather stations and high definition AI-enabled cameras that help company 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 grid that allow for shutoffs to be more isolated and impact fewer customers.

So far this year, the utility has shut off the power three times, impacting a total of about 11,500 customers, including a shutoff last week in portions of five counties in Northern California.

But the company’s decision to rely on fast-trip settings in high fire risk areas has resulted in more outages. The settings allow for power to automatically be cut within one-tenth of 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 a few minutes to several days, according to data submitted by PG&E to state regulators. PG&E says it’s working to reduce those outages through efforts like trimming overhead branches and installing guards on power lines.

Gayle Howey, 72, who lives in a community nestled among oak trees in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, said she experienced more than twenty power outages over 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 for a new generator.

PG&E said that 92% of the up to 1.8 million customers in areas with fast-trip settings experience two outages or less. The utility said multi-day outages are exceedingly rare and its target for the average duration in 2024 is about three hours, with the average so far this year sitting at 149 minutes.

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

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(With assistance from Lauren Rosenthal.)

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