PG&E turns on enhanced powerline safety settings as California’s fire season begins

Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) said its Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings (EPSS) have been engaged and will protect approximately 3 million people living in high fire-risk areas in the company’s service area.

The EPSS technology, which started in 2021, turns off power within one-tenth of a second when a fault is detected. Last year, the EPSS was enabled on 170 circuits producing an 80 percent reduction in CPUC-reportable ignitions that could have produced a wildfire in High Fire Threat Districts, the company said.

Based on the previous year’s success, the company said it has expanded the program to more than 1,000 circuits on more than 25,000 distribution line miles in high fire-risk areas this year and approximately 18,000 line miles in adjacent portions of the system.

The company said that through June 1, the results in 2022 mirror those of last year, with an 82 percent reduction in CPUC-reportable ignitions that could result in a wildfire when compared to the average number of ignitions between 2018-2020.

PG&E expects that the safety settings will stay on for 700 to 800 of the circuits between now and the end of the wildfire season. The technology will be enabled on days when there is a Red Flag Warning for the other approximately 200 circuits, the company said and will be disabled when weather conditions are favorable for turning them off.