How Hawaiian Electric could have learned from PG&E’s mistakes.
As Hawaii’s electric utility faces scrutiny for active power lines that fell in high winds during last week’s catastrophic fires, Pacific Gas & Electric says it’s prepared to cut the power as a precaution to prevent wildfires in California this fire season.
The public-safety power shutoffs come with advance warnings during severe fire weather and are different from the many unpredictable andthat are plaguing thousands of PG&E customers this summer. Those outages, which PG&E calls Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings, are caused when a circuit breaker instantly cuts power after, for example, a tree branch falls on a line.
Meanwhile, an Oregon jury recently found utility PacifiCorp liable for causing devastating wildfires across Oregon during Labor Day weekend in 2020. The utility failed to shut off power to its 600,000 customers during a windstorm, despite warnings from then-Gov. Kate Brown’s chief-of-staff and top fire officials, plaintiffs alleged.
“We really benefited the first couple months of the year from all that moisture…But we’re now experiencing pretty similar conditions to where we were in 2022,” said Scott Strenfel, PG&E’s senior director of meteorology and fire science. “We’re now starting to see live fuel moistures dry out.” They are smaller through the installation of 1,200 devices that break up the grid into tiny sections, reducing the number of homes on each circuit. That has removed about 26,000 customers from risk of a PSPS.
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