On Monday, large investor-owned utilities (IOUs), including PG&E and Southern California Edison (SCE), filed comprehensive 2023-2025 Wildfire Mitigation Plans (WMPs) with regulators at the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety (Energy Safety). These Plans describe how the respective utility is constructing, maintaining, and operating its lines and equipment to minimize the risk of their assets igniting a catastrophic wildfire, as well as the respective costs to conduct such activities.
Notably, PG&E intends to underground 2,100 miles of powerlines, mostly in high-risk areas, between 2023-2026. Additionally, PG&E favors its Enhanced Powerlines Safety Settings (EPSS) program to address vegetation risk over the Enhanced Vegetation Management program, which is now broken up into three separate vegetation management initiatives. SCE proposes to continue its key grid hardening strategies of installing covered conductor (or “tree wire”), prioritizing high fire threat areas or areas at risk of a Public Safety Power Shut-off (PSPS). By the end of 2025, SCE estimates covered conductor will have replaced 75% of its overhead powerlines in high-risk areas. To view these plans in full, please see the Energy Safety Docket here.
Energy Safety will announce an upcoming technical workshop for stakeholders (including public agencies and members of the public) to ask questions directed at the large IOUs on their WMP initiatives. Energy Safety has primary responsibility to evaluate these Plans and determine compliance, while the California Public Utilities Commission “ratifies” Energy Safety’s final approval of these plans as well as reviews the reasonableness of the costs in each utility’s General Rate Case (GRC). Written public comments are due by May 26th. On May 8th, Small and Multi-Jurisdictional Utilities (SMJUs)—which include Liberty Utilities and PacifiCorp—will file their 2023-2025 comprehensive WMPs with a similar public vetting process to follow.
For more information or to send feedback on these WMPs, please contact RCRC Policy Advocate Leigh Kammerich.