Southern California Edison outlined its 2024 plans on Wednesday afternoon to improve and reduce the number of Public Safety Power Shutoffs during the fifth 5th annual post-season/pre-season public briefings, hosted by the California Public Utilities Commission.
SCE discussed a relatively new data-automation program that it implemented in 2022, according to Jill Anderson, executive vice president and chief operating officer.
“Our new system, which is really essential to make sure we can handle all the different aspects of doing the PSPS successfully, went live in 2022, and we had successful use of it throughout 2022,” Anderson said. “But as everyone knows, it was a relatively light season for PSPS’s.”
The total number of PSPS events decreased from 16 in 2019 to two in 2024 so far.
But Anderson said that in October last year, there were multiple factors, including different weather patterns in 2023, that made it difficult for the system to keep up with the notifications.
Tom Brady, principal manager of business resiliency, said that one of the main things SCE wanted to improve on was the company’s notification performance and noted that it missed about 80,000 notifications in 2023, with a majority of it during October last year.
Brady said that SCE put together a team of about 40 experts last year in response to the complaints and to fill in the gaps in the company’s performance.
“This work is ongoing and it’s full-time and it’s consumed many weekends and evenings to keep on schedule,” Brady said. “We got a lot of work to reprogram our automation, and the end goal is improving our notifications for a better season in 2024, and we’re confident that between the system fixes and the process changes we’ve made, we will get that better result in 2024.”
Edison also included a breakdown of its spending fees last year related to PSPS events, which was separated into four categories: fire science and advanced modeling, enhanced situational awareness, PSPS execution and PSPS customer support.
This year’s expected costs for operation and activities related to PSPS events have mostly increased, according to Ray Fugere, director of wildfire safety, including an increase from just under $20,000,000 to nearly $30,000,000 in spending toward PSPS execution.
Fugere said SCE installed 114 new weather stations to give the company a total of 1,700 in high fire areas, along with 55 new cameras to help detect fires.
“It’s about one station every 6 miles in our high fire areas,” Fugere said.
To address frequently impacted power circuits in 2024, Fugere said that SCE plans to increase the reach of covered conductors and that it plans to install 14 new switches to reduce the number of PSPS events.
Fugere also said that SCE is pushing forward with microgrids in more rural areas, which are small battery-powered grids connected to the overall Edison network that can stay on during power outages.
More information can be found on SCE’s website at SCE.com and CPUC’s website at cpuc.ca.gov.
