PG&E Adds Over 50 New Weather Stations to Advance Forecasting Abilities, Better Predict Extreme Weather and Wildfire Potential
July 16 2018 - 2:17PM
Business Wire
As part of its Community Wildfire Safety Program, Pacific Gas
and Electric Company (PG&E) is building a network of weather
stations to monitor and further advance its weather forecasting
abilities to better predict where a wildfire could occur so it can
respond quickly and appropriately to help keep customers and
communities safe.
Since January of this year, PG&E has added more than 50 new
weather stations, with around 200 total planned to be built and
installed across PG&E’s service area by the end of the year.
The newly added stations are located in Alameda, Butte, Contra
Costa, El Dorado, Marin, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Santa Clara, Santa
Cruz, Sonoma and Tuolumne counties.
Data collected by these stations will be streamed in real time
and available to state and local agencies and the public through
online sources such as NOAA and MesoWest.
“We saw first-hand last year how extreme weather events driven
by climate change are causing unprecedented and unanticipated
wildfires,” said Kevin Dasso, PG&E vice president of Electric
Asset Management. “Adding new weather stations in high fire-threat
areas across our service area enhances our weather forecasting and
modeling to help bolster wildfire prevention and response efforts
and keep our customers safe.”
Real-Time Data to Assess Fire Danger Conditions
PG&E has historically used weather forecast data for many
purposes, mainly for predicting storm damage and for assessing fire
danger. Its team of meteorologists, which includes fire-weather
specialists, performs daily monitoring of current and forecast
weather patterns and fire threat projections using in-house and
publicly available data from the National Weather Service, CAL
FIRE, US Forest Service and more. This information helps PG&E
predict when and where the fire threat will be high or extreme so
additional steps can be taken to keep critical infrastructure,
utility crews and communities safe.
With these new weather stations, PG&E will be able to
capture additional real-time data related to temperature, wind
speeds and humidity levels to provide improved awareness of current
fire danger conditions.
PG&E’s meteorologists will feed information to the company’s
new Wildfire Safety Operations Center team to review data and
determine any needed action to help reduce wildfire risks. In the
event of extreme fire danger conditions, one of the actions
PG&E may take is temporarily turning off electricity for safety
in specific areas. PG&E is reaching out to customers who are
served by electric lines in extreme fire-threat areas to let them
know about possible power outages during high wildfire threats so
they can take steps to prepare.
These new weather stations are one of the additional
precautionary measures PG&E is putting in place as part of its
Community Wildfire Safety Program, intended to reduce wildfire
threats and strengthen communities for the future. More information
can be found at pge.com/wildfiresafety.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E
Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas
and electric energy companies in the United States. Based in San
Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers
some of the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in
Northern and Central California. For more information, visit
www.pge.com/ and pge.com/news.
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Pacific Gas and Electric CompanyMedia Relations,
415-973-5930
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