Major progress in making power lines safer, PG&E says

PG&E reports it has made significant improvements in its Powerline Safety program, a high-tech system that automatically shuts off power within one-tenth of a second of a potential threat to the electric system, such as a tree branch falling into a powerline.

Launched as a pilot in July 2021, Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings (EPSS) will be expanded to all distribution powerlines in high fire-threat areas this year. PG&E reports that enhanced safety settings reduced “reportable ignitions” by up to 80%.

Another goal of the program is to reduce the power outages. With improvements in equipment and response time, the average customer outage length on EPSS-enabled circuits decreased by 40%, the utility reprorted.

“As we strive for our goal of zero utility-caused wildfires, we recognize a critical need to deploy these enhanced safety settings on our powerlines in the areas that face the greatest threat,” said Mark Quinlan, PG&E’s vice president of Transmission and Distribution System Operations. “In tandem with the company’s other wildfire prevention efforts for 2022, including beginning to underground 10,000 miles of electric distribution powerlines and installing more weather stations, high-definition cameras and microgrids, the expansion of these advanced safety settings will help make our system safer for our customers.”

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