California regulators and lawmakers are trying to avoid a repeat of last year’s unprecedented use of public safety power shutoffs (PSPS) to prevent utility equipment from igniting wildfires — and the anger it provoked among ratepayers.

The California Public Utilities Commission and the state Assembly’s Utilities and Energy Committee each held hearings last week to determine what can be done in the coming months to limit PSPS use by the state’s three large investor-owned utilities.

PSPS were used 30 times between 2013 and 2019, and 33 times last year alone, energy committee Chair Chris Holden said. “What happened?” Holden asked at the hearing, which was held at the state capitol in Sacramento.

“It’s safe to say that we’re all frustrated by the use of public safety power shutoffs by our state’s electric utilities,” he said. With climate change and aging infrastructure, “we do understand the need to use this tool, but it absolutely must be used as a last resort — judiciously, during extreme weather events, when there is no other way to ensure that utility equipment will not come into contact with vegetation and start a fire.”

Southern California Edison and, to a lesser extent, Pacific Gas and Electric bore the brunt of criticism at the hearings, while San Diego Gas & Electric received relatively little blowback.

SCE Responds

PG&E appeared to have made progress in limiting PSPS events in 2020 and communicating with its customers, Holden said. SCE, however, doubled its PSPS events from 2019 and had “repeated failures to follow protocols at the expense of customers and public safety,” he said.

“They repeatedly assured the CPUC president that, ‘We are going to [change]. We plan to. We want to,’” Holden said. “But in the moment, they did not. This raises the question of whether the [CPUC and other] agencies have sufficient enforcement tools.”

State authorities need tools “that can be used in real-time if a utility is calling events unnecessarily or failing to follow proper notification protocols for customers, public safety partners and other state agencies,” he said.

In late January, the CPUC held a hearing to examine what it called SCE’s mishandling of PSPS events. It demanded the utility produce a corrective action plan with specific goals and timelines for improvement. (See CPUC Slams SCE Over Power Shutoffs.)

On March 1, SCE presented its plan to the CPUC in a follow-up workshop.

Erik Takayesu, the SCE vice president who oversees PSPS readiness, noted that 2020 was a record year for wildfires in California with more than 4 million acres burned and an unusually long fire season in Southern California. Many of SCE’s PSPS events occurred later in the year, he said.

“Two-thirds of our deactivations occurred from November through the end of the year … [with] particular hardships experienced by customers over the holiday season,” Takayesu said.

SCE turned off power on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Eve, sending out late or confusing notices of the PSPS events and angering residents.

“I and the members of our team have heard the concerns and frustrations of our customers and communities who have been affected by PSPS events,” Takayesu said.

The utility made significant progress in 2020 but needs to do more, he said.

“Our main emphasis in 2020 was focused on the distribution system, creating segmentation plans for every one of our 11,600 circuits in our high fire risk areas,” Takayesu said.

The utility removed 25,000 customers from the scope of PSPS events last year, but 230,000 customers were subjected to repeat de-energizations, another cause of customer frustration.

“We now need to further direct our efforts to focus on the most frequently impacted circuits,” Takayesu said.

SCE intends to turn its attention this year to circuits that have experienced four or more de-energizations since 2019. Continued grid hardening will reduce the frequency of PSPS and improve reliability across the utility’s grid, he said.

As of Feb. 19, SCE had identified 72 circuits for potential expedited upgrades such as covered conductor. It intends to complete the work by Oct. 1, when Southern California’s peak fire season typically starts, the utility told the CPUC.

In Thursday’s legislative hearing, Phil Herrington, SCE senior vice president for transmission and distribution, said that “despite the challenges posed by COVID-19, we met or exceeded nearly all the goals in our 2020 wildfire mitigation plan.”

That included installing more than 960 circuit miles of insulated wire, over 6,000 fire-resistant bolts and nearly 600 weather stations, Herrington said. SCE also removed more than 12,000 hazard trees that could have fallen into power lines.

Enhanced Oversight of SCE

Such assurances did not mollify some officials at the hearings.

CPUC President Marybel Batjer presided over the SCE workshop and testified before lawmakers last week.

The commission, she said, has been trying to get the state’s investor-owned utilities to improve their PSPS execution and limit use of the practice since October 2019, when PG&E blacked out 2.4 million residents over large swaths of the state, generating public backlash. (See California Officials Hammer PG&E over Power Shutoffs.)

Batjer agreed with Holden that in 2020, “for PG&E, we appear to see improvements … on a few fronts [including] overall reduction in scope and scale [of PSPS events] compared to 2019.” The state’s largest utility has improved its planning for community resource centers to serve residents during blackouts and has improved its PSPS event forecasting as well, she said.

The utility still needs to work on sharing information with local agencies and tribal governments, and it needs to expand its battery-backup program to help medically vulnerable customers during PSPS events, she added. (See PG&E Working to Improve Safety Blackouts.)

“Its notification protocols [for customers] also require improvements,” she said.

SDG&E also needs to improve communication with local authorities and beef up its battery backup program for medical baseline customers, Batjer said.

SCE has been more problematic. The state’s second largest utility “has required special attention and has been the subject of two public meetings at the commission” this year, Batjer said.

“There are many areas where I believe Edison did not measure up to the standards … its customers deserve,” she added.

The utility initiated 16 PSPS events between May and December last year, most of which were in November and December, including the two major holidays, Batjer noted.

“Among the various problems we observed were issues with the level of transparency around Edison’s PSPS decision-making process, inadequate notification to impacted customers, poor coordination and communication with state and local governments, shortcomings in identifying and notifying medical baseline and functional needs customers and efficient PSPS post-event reporting to the commission,” she said.

“In addition, we continue to have serious concerns with the pace at which Edison has been deploying backup power to help vulnerable customers cope with PSPS events.”

One of SCE’s major shortcomings was its under- or over-notification of customers potentially affected by PSPS, Batjer said.

“Only 20% of the customers it gave advanced notice to this past fire season were affected by a PSPS event,” she said. “While it is desirable to have as few customers de-energized as possible, there is something wrong with this planning approach if you’re consistently putting large numbers of customers on notice and then nothing happens.”

There were also too many instances in which customers were not notified before losing power, including on Thanksgiving, she said.

“Forecasting and communications must improve,” Batjer said of SCE.

The CPUC had to enhance its oversight of PG&E’s PSPS practices going into the 2020 fire season, she noted. “We’re doing this now with Edison … to ensure they live up to their commitments under their corrective action plan.”

Upcoming Actions

The CPUC is planning to host a public workshop later this month to hear from utilities and impacted communities on lessons learned from 2020 PSPS.

“These lessons will inform another round of updating of our PSPS guidelines, which we commenced on Feb. 19,” Batjer said. “We will continue to hold public meetings as we enter the critical months of the wildfire season to assess the utilities preparedness. If required, we will utilize our expansive enforcement authority over the utilities to deliver the type of behavior customers deserve and expect from providers of an essential service.”

The results of an investigation into IOU power shutoffs, initiated in 2019, will be released soon, she said.

PSPS may continue for years as utilities upgrade their systems, but the goal is to stop needing it, Batjer said.

“I want to reiterate the CPUC’s commitment to driving the utilities towards zero need,” she said. “The use of PSPS and the loss of power causes major disruptions to households, businesses, medical facilities, communication carriers and other critical infrastructure. It strains state and local emergency and public safety personnel.

“The public deserves better, and we are working to ensure they are better served by the utilities,” she said.