LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Following several years of devastating wildfires that have been caused, in some cases, by its electrical equipment, Pacific Gas and Electric announced Wednesday plans for a major new initiative to expand the undergrounding of electric distribution power lines in California’s high fire threat districts.
It’s an important announcement for areas like Lake County, almost all of which is in the areas designated as high fire threat by the California Public Utilities Commission.
The company said the goal is to further harden its system and help prevent wildfires.
PG&E Chief Executive Officer Patti Poppe announced the initiative in Butte County, which has been hard-hit by fires caused by electrical infrastructure, including the deadly 2018 Camp fire.
The utility also said this week that a tree that fell into its power equipment may have been responsible for starting the Dixie fire, which by Wednesday night had burned more than 91,000 acres above the Feather River Canyon in Butte County.
“We want what all of our customers want: a safe and resilient energy system. We have taken a stand that catastrophic wildfires shall stop. We will partner with the best and the brightest to bring that stand to life. We will demand excellence of ourselves. We will gladly partner with policymakers and state and local leaders to map a path we can all believe in,” Poppe said.
Poppe, who joined the company this earlier year, said Wednesday, “I came to make it right and make it safe.”
She acknowledged that the company had planned to wait for a couple of months to make the announcement, but that they couldn’t wait due to the Dixie fire.
“We will make it safe and we will bury the lines,” Poppe said.
The new multiyear plan calls for undergrounding 10,000 miles of power lines in highest fire-threat areas.
The company said it maintains more than 25,000 miles of overhead distribution power lines in the highest fire-threat areas — Tier 2, Tier 3 and Zone 1 — which is more than 30% of its total distribution overhead system.
“The exact number of projects or miles undergrounded each year through PG&E’s new expanded undergrounding program will evolve as PG&E performs further project scoping and inspections, estimating and engineering review,” the company said in its Wednesday announcement.
Clearlake mayor: Undergrounding ‘the ultimate hardening’
PG&E reports that in Lake County, it serves a total of 37,780 customer accounts; of those, 15,719 are in the high fire threat areas.
Additionally, PG&E has 1,172 total miles of electric distribution lines in Lake County, of which 716 miles are in the high fire threat areas.
The company’s transmission line miles in Lake County total 199, with 175 miles of those lines in the high fire threat area.
Lake County officials have pressed PG&E previously on undergrounding in the county.
Those officials include Clearlake Mayor Dirk Slooten, whose city was impacted by the October 2017 Sulphur fire, part of the North Bay Fire Storm.
Cal Fire determined the 2,207 acre Sulphur Fire — which destroyed 162 structures — was caused by a failure of a PG&E-owned power pole near Pomo and Sulphur Bank roads in Clearlake Oaks.
Slooten also is a native of the Netherlands, a country that has placed much of its power distribution system underground and reportedly built it to withstand a 10,000 year flood.
At a May 20 Clearlake City Council meeting, PG&E updated the city on its plans to mitigate fire risks in the area, with company representative Jon Stallman acknowledging that conditions are drier than they have seen historically.
“We recognize that this could be a tough season, and I think we should all be prepared,” Stallman said.
Slooten pressed Stallman and another company representative, Melinda Rivera, on the company’s system hardening plans for the county, which include 24 miles of improvements.
At that point, only one mile had been completed, with Rivera quick to clarify that system hardening did not necessarily mean undergrounding.
During the discussion, Slooten said, “Undergrounding is the ultimate hardening,” and criticized the company for going “in the wrong direction” by not focusing more on undergrounding.
In response to Lake County News’ question about where PG&E might conduct undergrounding locally, company representative James Noonan said in an email, “Regarding specific locations for undergrounding in Lake County, we’ll be engaging customers and stakeholders as PG&E develops a plan and reviews potential additional undergrounding sites based on a variety of factors, including local municipal planning and safety considerations. Engineering an underground electric system requires designing the system around existing water, natural gas and drainage systems, as well as planning for future road widening. This work will be focused within the Tier 2 and Tier 3 High-Fire Threat Districts of our system, and we intend to work closely with customers and local, state, federal, tribal and regulatory officials throughout this new safety initiative.”
Company describes previous undergrounding projects
PG&E said its plan represents the largest effort in the U.S. to underground power lines as a wildfire risk reduction measure.
In the past company officials, when asked about undergrounding, have pointed to its high cost.
On Wednesday, the company said that undergrounding previously has been done on a select, case-by-case basis, and largely for reasons other than wildfire risk reduction.
“Thanks to breakthroughs PG&E has achieved on undergrounding projects in recent years, undergrounding can now play a much more prominent role in PG&E's ongoing efforts to harden the electric grid,” the company said.
PG&E said that, following the devastating October 2017 Northern California wildfires and the 2018 Camp fire — most of which were connected to the company’s equipment — PG&E began to evaluate placing overhead power lines underground as a wildfire safety measure, and to better understand the construction and cost requirements associated with undergrounding for system hardening purposes.
As part of its Community Wildfire Safety Program, PG&E said it completed multiple demonstration projects aimed at converting overhead power lines to underground in high fire-threat areas of Alameda, Contra Costa, Nevada and Sonoma counties from 2018 to 2020.
As a part of the rebuilding efforts following the October 2017 Northern California wildfires, PG&E said it completed undergrounding eight miles of power lines in the Larkfield Estates and Mark West Estates communities in Sonoma County in 2018.
In Mendocino County, in November 2018, PG&E said it had completed building new underground electric and gas utilities in Redwood Valley as part of the wildfire rebuilding effort there.
In 2019, PG&E announced it would rebuild all its power lines underground in the town of Paradise as it helps the community recover from the Camp fire. PG&E also is rebuilding power lines underground within the 2020 North Complex Fire footprint in Butte County.
PG&E said those demonstration projects and rebuild efforts have helped it to refine the construction and cost requirements associated with targeted undergrounding, enabling the acceleration and expansion of undergrounding projects.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
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