PG&E sets up center to forecast wildfires
In a room where Pacific Gas and Electric Co. personnel used to monitor the electricity grid, analysts now watch day and night for fire.
Maps glowing on a wall before them show fire threat levels for a broad swath of Northern and Central California, using a computer model fed by weather stations. The color-coded maps stretch out days in advance, with estimates for how conditions will change. Green equals low danger; red, high; glaring purple, extreme.
Satellite imagery shows clouds wheeling over the state. Other screens can display wind speeds or temperatures from locations throughout PG&E’s territory, or the latest updates on active wildfires from state or federal authorities.
The utility’s new Wildfire Safety Operations Center, part of PG&E’s response to the devastating Wine Country fires in October, will be staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout fire season. Even if no one’s quite sure when California’s fire season begins and ends anymore. “It’s taking the weather and other data and turning it into action,” said Kevin Dasso, PG&E’s vice president of electric asset management. “We need to be ready for whatever.”
PG&E does not yet have an estimate for how much the center, once fully staffed, will cost. It occupies a room within the company’s San Francisco headquarters with stunning views of the bay, although the analysts face away from the panora-
ma, toward a wall of screens.
The facility will not replace the utility’s existing weather forecasting center in San Ramon, even though some functions will overlap. Although the meteorology center has for years helped guide PG&E’s preparations for winter storms, and has also predicted fire conditions, the company wanted a new facility focused solely on fires.
If a major fire erupts, the new facility also will not take the place of PG&E’s standard emergency operations center, which is in an adjacent building and also handles such crises as earthquakes. But in addition to monitoring fire conditions, the center will coordinate several new fire-prevention steps that PG&E has, since October, committed to take.
For example, the center’s supervisors will help deploy crews from Capstone Fire & Safety Management, a private company. Two-person Capstone crews driving small fire engines will accompany PG&E field workers in areas where fire threats are deemed to be high, particularly when the utility’s employees are performing tasks, like welding, that could spark flames. PG&E has five Capstone crews in place now, with another 20 expected by June.
“Their purpose is to be out there with our crews to protect our assets and our personnel,” said Evermary Hickey, PG&E’s director of emergency preparedness and response. “They can take immediate action if there’s something that gets sparked, or if there’s a fire nearby.”
A new network of weather stations mounted on power poles will send a steady stream of data to the center, monitoring temperature, humidity, and wind speed and direction. PG&E has installed six of the stations so far, plans to have 40 to 50 in the field by July and wants 200 deployed by the end of the year.
In times and places of heightened risk, the center will also take live reports from observers PG&E will send into the field.
“You can say there’s 40 mile-an-hour winds, but what does that do?” Hickey said. “It doesn’t always do something, but if they’re seeing a lot of trees moving, branches are falling off, we want to know that.”
And should the fire forecast call for extreme conditions — such as high winds and ultra-low humidity — the center’s supervisors will raise the question of whether the utility needs to switch off some of its power lines rather than risk a spark. Although the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has yet to name a cause for any of the fires that tore through Northern California last fall, killing 45 people, power lines blown by a fierce wind storm are widely considered to be a strong possibility.
PG&E has held more than 50 meetings with local officials, trying to hammer out a protocol for switching off lines in advance — and warning customers about the blackout to come.
“It’s a different concept,” Dasso said. “People are not used to the idea that we would deenergize lines without anything having happened.”