Public Safety Power Shutoffs Initiated and Considered to Reduce Wildfire Risk

Several electric utilities in California and Oregon have initiated or are considering Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) procedures given extreme temperatures, high winds, and dry conditions that raise the risk of wildfire ignitions. In Northern and Central California, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) began conducting Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) this morning, impacting approximately 172,000 customers across 22 counties. These PSPSs are forecast to remain until Wednesday night. Elsewhere in the state, Southern California Edison announced that it may have to institute PSPSs, which would affect approximately 66,000 customers. In Oregon, Portland General Electric initiated a PSPS, the first such event in the state. That outage is affecting 5,000 customers.

The purpose of a PSPS is to reduce the risk of igniting a wildfire, as in the past sparking electrical equipment has been blamed for triggering these incidents. PSPSs have impacted water and wastewater utilities in the past, such as last year when they were instituted for parts of California experiencing conditions conducive to wildfires. WaterISAC produced a special report on the experiences of two utilities, San Jose Water and East Bay Municipal Utility District, discussing how they responded to these measures.

As of yesterday, the National Interagency Fire Center reported there were 87 active large wildfires (+12 from the Thursday Security and Resilience Update), involving over 2.7 million acres (+700,000). Twenty-three (+4) of these fires are in California, covering over 1.7 million acres (+200,000). In addition to California and Oregon, there are also large wildfires in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.