PG&E Publicly Releases Supplemental Report on Electric Incidents Near the Camp Fire
December 11 2018 - 8:28PM
Business Wire
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today submitted its
supplemental report to the California Public Utilities Commission
(CPUC) about two incidents on its electric system near the Camp
Fire. PG&E is also releasing the report publicly.
The company reiterated, “The loss of life, homes and businesses
in the Camp Fire is truly devastating. Our focus continues to be on
assessing our infrastructure to further enhance safety, restoring
electric and gas service where possible, and helping customers
begin to recover and rebuild. Throughout our service area, we are
committed to doing everything we can to further reduce the risk of
wildfire.”
20-Day Supplemental Report
PG&E submitted two Electric Incident Reports (EIR) to the
CPUC; one on Nov. 8 and one on Nov. 16. Today, PG&E publicly
released a letter to the CPUC supplementing those reports. The
cause of the fire is still under investigation.
The previous preliminary incident reports noted outages on the
Caribou-Palermo 115kV transmission line at 6:15 a.m. and the Big
Bend 1101 12kV at 6:45 a.m. on Nov. 8. On Nov. 8, PG&E was able
to conduct an aerial patrol of the Caribou-Palermo site and
observed damage on the line at a tower. As noted in today’s letter
to the CPUC, a suspension insulator supporting a transposition
jumper had separated from an arm on the tower. Once PG&E could
access the site on the ground, it found a broken C-hook attached to
the separated suspension insulator that had connected the
suspension insulator to a tower arm. PG&E also observed a flash
mark on the tower.
With regard to the Big Bend 1101 distribution circuit, PG&E
conducted a patrol on Nov. 9. and observed a pole and other
equipment on the ground with bullets and bullet holes at the break
point of the pole and on the equipment. On Nov. 12, another
PG&E patrol observed wires down and damaged and downed poles.
PG&E also found several snapped trees, with some on top of the
downed wires.
Beginning on November 13, 2018, CAL FIRE requested that PG&E
assist it in collecting evidence related to the Big Bend
outage.
These incidents remain under investigation, and this information
is preliminary. The causes may not be fully understood until
additional information is available, including information that can
only be obtained through examination and testing of the equipment
retained by CAL FIRE. PG&E is cooperating with CAL FIRE.
Expanding and Accelerating Wildfire Safety Measures
Given the continued and growing threat of wildfire, PG&E is
evolving and expanding its Community Wildfire Safety
Program. Following last year’s wildfires, PG&E launched the
program in March as an additional precautionary measure to further
reduce wildfire risks and help keep its customers and the
communities it serves safe. Ongoing and expanded actions
include:
Real-Time Monitoring and
Intelligence
- Coordinating prevention and response
efforts by monitoring wildfire risk in real-time from its Wildfire
Safety Operations Center.
- Expanding its network of weather
stations to enhance weather forecasting and modeling. By 2022,
PG&E will add 1,300 new weather stations in high fire-risk
areas.
- Installing nearly 600 new
high-definition cameras in high fire-threat areas, increasing
coverage across these areas to more than 90 percent.
New and Enhanced Safety
Measures
- Further enhancing vegetation management
efforts with an increased focus on vegetation that poses a higher
potential for wildfire risk, such as overhanging branches and limbs
directly above and around power lines, and tree species at an
increased risk of falling into power lines, as well as dead and
dying trees.
- Conducting accelerated safety
inspections of over 5,500 miles of transmission lines, including
approximately 50,000 structures in high fire-threat areas, in
addition to routine inspections and maintenance. This includes
ground or climbing inspections, as well as aerial imagery captured
by drones and in some cases, helicopter, to further complement and
enhance visual inspections.
- Taking action right away to address any
immediate risk to public safety found during accelerated
inspections. Similar inspections of distribution lines in high
fire-threat areas are planned to begin in early 2019.
- Disabling of automatic reclosing of
circuit breakers and reclosers in high fire-risk areas during
wildfire season.
- Proactively turning off electric power
for safety, only as a last resort, when extreme fire danger
conditions are forecasted, and helping customers prepare by
providing early warning notification when and where possible.
Longer-term Electric System
Hardening
- Installing stronger and more resilient
poles and covered power lines across 7,000 miles of highest
fire-risk areas over the course of the next ten years, reducing the
likelihood of damage from debris, animals and birds.
- Replacing equipment to further reduce
risk to its system and tailoring upgrades based on terrain and
weather conditions using more granular analysis of fire-prone
regions.
- Piloting new resilience zones to
provide electricity to community resources and help reduce the
potential impact of a Public Safety Power Shutoff event.
Wildfire Risk is Growing
California faces an ever-increasing threat from catastrophic
wildfires, extreme weather and higher temperatures. Recent state
and federal climate assessments warn the threat is only growing.
California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment found the average
area burned statewide would increase 77 percent if greenhouse gas
emissions continue to rise. The Assessment also said prolonged
drought and higher temperatures will triple the frequency of
wildfires.
Multiple factors contribute to wildfire risk across PG&E’s
service area. These include vast tree mortality following a
historic five-year drought. Fire season is now extended due to
prolonged periods of high temperatures, extreme dryness, tinder-dry
grass and record-high winds increasing the number of wildfires and
making them more dangerous. More than half of PG&E’s service
area is in extreme or high fire-risk areas as designated by the
CPUC’s Fire-Threat Map.
More information on the Community Wildfire Safety Program is
available at www.pge.com/wildfiresafety.
Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-Looking
Statements
This news release includes forward-looking statements that are
not historical facts, including statements about the beliefs,
expectations, estimates, future plans and strategies of PG&E
and PG&E Corporation. These statements are based on current
expectations and assumptions, which management believes are
reasonable, and on information currently available to management,
but are necessarily subject to various risks and uncertainties. In
addition to the risk that these assumptions prove to be inaccurate,
factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from
those contemplated by the forward-looking statements include the
timing and outcome of the investigations into the Camp Fire and
other factors disclosed in PG&E and PG&E Corporation’s and
the Utility’s annual report on Form 10-K for the year
ended December 31, 2017, their most recent quarterly report on
Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2018, and their
subsequent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. PG&E and PG&E Corporation undertake no
obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking
statements, whether due to new information, future events or
otherwise.
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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