Supervisor Thomas

(PLACERVILLE, CALIFORNIA) July 8, 2022 — According to Climatewire, as many as 3 million Californians could lose electricity with no advance warning this summer, as the nation’s biggest utility expands a system that automatically cuts power after potential wildfire-triggering events.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said it has increased the system to include 1,000 circuit breakers, up from 170 circuits last year. Such circuits are outfitted with safety triggers that shut off power instantly if vegetation falls on a power line or during similar incidents that could trigger a wildfire.

The expanded program will affect 1 million customer accounts, comprising homes where about 3 million people live, according to PG&E. That’s nearly one-fifth of the utility’s electric customers.

“When we stop ignitions, we stop wildfires,” Mark Quinlan, vice president of transmission and distribution operations for PG&E, said in a statement. “We work every day to prevent outages and to expedite restoration if they do happen.”

Expansion of the program — which was a pilot last year — comes as San Francisco-based PG&E works to cut the number of wildfire ignitions in the Golden State. Since 2017, the utility’s equipment has ignited more than 30 wildfires that destroyed more than 23,000 homes and businesses and killed more than 100 people, the Associated Press has reported.

The expanded circuit breaker program is in addition to power shut-offs the utility does in response to “red flag” warnings of high winds during dry conditions that increase the risk of wildfire. Those blackouts typically include about 48 hours of warnings. The newer program is an automatic system.

PG&E said a trial of the automatic blackout program last year reduced ignitions that could trigger a wildfire by 82 percent, compared with the average for 2018 to 2020.

In the last year, the system has triggered nearly 600 power shutoffs. The average outage lasted 3.5 hours, PG&E said.  The circuits in the program are part of 25,000 distribution line miles in high-fire-risk areas, as well as approximately 18,000 line miles in adjacent portions of the system, according to the utility.

Residents can learn whether they’re in the automatic shutoff zone by checking the PG&E site.