The Northwest faces “above-normal, significant wildland fire potential” in July 2025, and the Bonneville Power Administration is taking steps to enhance mitigation efforts like public safety power shutoffs (PSPS) and improving communication.
Citing a seasonal outlook by the National Interagency Fire Center, Kelly Miller, supervisory land surveyor at BPA, said the region is “looking pretty good until … July.”
“In July, the significant wildland fire potential increases quickly, and we’re doing our best to prepare prior to that,” Miller said during an April 17 public update on BPA’s wildfire mitigation and PSPS processes.
BPA is working on updates to the fourth iteration of its wildfire mitigation plan, slated for release in May 2026. However, the agency has continuously improved mitigation processes through lessons learned since the release of the first BPA wildfire plan in 2021, Miller said.
The burn area in BPA’s service territory equaled 40.8% of the national burn area. More than 3.2 million acres burned by the end of FY24, an almost three-fold increase over the 10-year average, BPA stated in its 2024 annual report. (See BPA Hit FY24 Reliability Targets Despite Wildfires, Load Records.)
BPA has identified several areas for improvement following extensive tests and training exercises, according to Miller.
“We don’t always have ample advanced warning about impending weather,” Miller said. “Sometimes weather comes on very quickly, as you can imagine, and we have to make some very quick decisions. We also realize that there are many downstream load effects on the energy system that are hard to quantify, and we are working with our distribution customers to have a better understanding of that.”
“Communication is a big piece of our public safety power shutoff events, and so we continue to make improvements to that, again, both internally and externally, how we can have more awareness for our customers,” Miller added.
BPA issued PSPS four times in 2024, which led to five line de-energizations, according to the presentation.
BPA closely collaborates with other agencies in its wildfire mitigation work. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory provides wildfire modeling to BPA. BPA also coordinates wildfire efforts with the U.S. Forest Service, among others.
The agency also has explored different technological solutions, like weather sensors and smoke detection cameras “to see how we might be able to improve in the future,” Miller said.
BPA follows industry standards and has created its own design and construction standards specific to its transmission assets, according to Miller. One notable standard implemented in 2024 includes placing fire-resistant wraps around transmission poles and installing more non-wood poles.
Miller noted the new standards helped save multiple poles during a fire near Keller, Wash., in July 2024.
