Reducing Wildfire Risk

When customers think about tree trimming, power line inspections, or crews working in right-of-ways, wildfire mitigation may not be the first thing that comes to mind. However, many of these activities play an important role in reducing wildfire risk and protecting the electric system.

Trees are one of the things that make our communities so beautiful, but they also present one of the greatest challenges to maintaining a safe and reliable electric system. Our crews work year-round to maintain safe clearances around power lines. Even with ongoing vegetation management, trees and large limbs beyond the areas we routinely maintain can still fall or be blown into our lines during storms and other weather events, resulting in outages.

Maintaining more than 2,000 miles of energized wire across our service area is an ongoing responsibility. To help reduce wildfire risk, vegetation management efforts continue to expand, along with the frequency of inspections across the electric system. Transmission right-of-ways are maintained on a more frequent cycle, and crews use a combination of aerial inspections, ground patrols, and other monitoring tools to identify potential hazards before they become problems.

During periods of elevated fire danger, we increase monitoring activities, implement additional system protections, and coordinate closely with local fire agencies, emergency management organizations, and neighboring utilities.

Together, these efforts help create a safer and more resilient electric system for the communities we serve.