NAPA, California – Atop a utility pole overlooking the vines, Pacific Gas & Electric recently installed equipment that will allow you to quickly shut down this part of the California wine country when the conditions for a forest fire are right.
As long as it’s a basketball pole and wide as a backboard, the team is a small but critical part of the utility’s multi-billion-year-long plan to avoid the kind of fires that have killed dozens of people, destroyed dozens of thousands of homes and businesses. And, last year, it sent PG&E into bankruptcy.
In northern and central California, where PG&E serves 16 million people, thousands of workers and utility contractors are fighting for poles, trimming trees, installing video cameras, setting up weather stations, and making other improvements to a network that, in some areas it is more than more than a century old and has been poorly maintained. The importance of his work is underlined by the speed with which spring vegetation has become brittle brown undergrowth in much of the region.
PG&E is making an aggressive effort to reduce the risk of fires, and recently agreed to show a reporter and photographer some of the results. Throughout the day, we drove a couple of hundred miles and made half a dozen stops in Napa and Sonoma counties, inspecting the recently completed upgrades and watching teams in orange vests, helmets, and masks work on power lines and trees around. they.
In total, the company has committed to spending $ 9.5 billion from 2020 to 2022 on its forest fire mitigation plan, according to state regulators.
If that sounds like a lot, it’s because of the expansion of PG&E operations in areas the state considers to be at high risk for forest fires, areas where the utility has enough power lines to more than wrap the Earth. Contact between an active power line and a dying tree could trigger the next Camp Fire, the 2018 fire started by a PG&E team that killed many and destroyed the city of Paradise. There is so much work to do that the company’s recently fired CEO said last year that it could take up to 10 years.
“What keeps us awake at night is the exposure, how many miles, how many things could go wrong,” said Matthew Pender, director of the PG&E community fire safety program. “It only takes one tree.”
Among the vulnerable areas are the legendary Napa and Sonoma vineyards, some of which have caught fire in forest fires as recently as last year. PG&E’s relationship with residents and businesses in the area has been affected by those fires and the company’s decision to turn off the power to prevent fires.
One site we visited was a wooden power pole along the picturesque Silverado Trail, at the foot of a dry mountain and in the shade of trees that die from woodpecker damage. Our guides noted that a team installed the switch on the pole just two weeks earlier. The device will allow PG&E employees working at a distant control center to shut off power to the immediate area while maintaining power along other segments of the power line. That will help the company be more surgical about the power outage than last year when it left millions of people without power during days when the fire hazard was high.
“The tinderbox is where we don’t want electricity in extreme situations, high winds, and so on,” Pender said. “We are targeting these switches to allow us to separate safe areas from dangerous areas.”
Brian Malk owns the 12-acre property where the pole is located. While acknowledging that PG&E’s work may avoid the need for widespread blackouts, he fears that even efforts to cut power more surgically could cripple sleep that has become a viable business in the past two decades, Malk Family Vineyards.
“You have wine in climate-controlled rooms,” said Malk. “In summer, if they turn off the power, you’re in trouble. You need the power to run the motors in the wells. You need the power to pump the water into the house and wet the area. “
He has so little faith that PG&E repairs will protect his vines from being decimated in the next big fire that is arming his vineyards with sprinklers that can spray water 50 yards away, buying backup generators, and keeping weeds cut by allowing the A neighbor’s cattle can graze on their land.
Forest fires burned more than 40,000 acres in the state during the first six months of the year, 6,000 more than in the same period last year, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. And after drier-than-usual conditions in Northern California during winter and spring, forecasters expect temperatures to stay above normal, significantly raising the threat of fires that will last until late summer and fall.
Earlier this month, PG&E emerged from bankruptcy, for the second time in two decades, after settling an estimated $ 30 billion in fire liabilities caused by its equipment. Another devastating fire could lead PG&E into the economic crisis and renew calls from its many critics for California lawmakers to break it or turn it into a customer-owned or utility company. A major fire would also test the ability of a new $ 20 billion state fund to help utilities cover the cost of fires caused by their equipment.
Near Calistoga, a town about 30 miles north of Napa, Irvin McCallum, a PG&E foreman, and his five-member team were installing equipment that can detect damage to a power line and automatically shut off power. The equipment is based on technology adopted from Australia, which has also had severe forest fire problems.
McCallum and his crew normally work at Ukiah, more than an hour north of Calistoga. But in PG & E’s effort to protect some of its most vulnerable power lines, Mr. McCallum’s team was dispatched to install the new sensor for testing on a stretch of the grid where Mount St. Helena towers above fields where grains graze. donkeys. “I am impressed with the amount of work we are doing as a company,” he said.
But critics of PG&E argue that the company has moved at a breakneck pace and has apparently failed in its attempt. They point to an August report by a court-appointed monitor, which identified “systemic” problems in PG&E’s fire mitigation work, including a nearly 50 percent deficit in identifying fire hazards. The report, part of the public service company’s criminal probation for a 2010 gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people, also noted that the company’s power lines had come into contact with trees and shrubs that contractors said they had cleared.
PG&E executives have acknowledged past security flaws and have committed to making radical changes, many of which have been demanded by courts, legislators and regulators. The company recently replaced most of its board members and appointed an interim chief executive officer.
Last month, the California Public Utilities Commission approved the latest wildfire prevention strategies from PG&E and other utility companies. “It will all come down to performance in the moment,” said Rachel Peterson, deputy executive director of the commission for safety and compliance policy, about PG&E’s work to reduce fire risks. “We just won’t know until the first event occurs.”
In Calistoga, company representatives were interested in showing a microgrid powered by a diesel generator to keep the lights on for about 800 customers when PG&E turns off power in the area to prevent fires. (Several other microgrids are almost ready in other parts of the company’s service area.)
Parts of Calistoga were under evacuation orders last October when the Kincade fire destroyed nearly 400 buildings and injured four people. State investigators said Thursday that the fire had been caused by the PG&E team.
Scott Newman’s family lost six houses and three farm buildings on a 500-acre property west of Calistoga. The Newmans have lived on the property since 1962 and are being rebuilt.
Mr. Newman regularly reviews a PG&E website that presents data from the approximately 700 new weather stations that the company has installed in his territory, and tries to keep neighbors informed about potential fire hazards. He said the success of the PG&E security updates was crucial for his family and others who depended on agriculture.
“PG&E has to do better,” said Newman. “I do see your efforts. I hope not only to be naive. Frankly, I have a lot of rebuilding to do. I don’t have time to review them.
