Speaking at a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission technical conference on Oct. 21, Northern California Power Agency General Manager Randy Howard said that the electric utility industry has been working collaboratively when it comes to wildfire mitigation efforts.
Howard, who was also representing APPA at the conference, participated in a panel on leveraging technology to monitor, evaluate, and mitigate wildfire risks. Along with his role at NCPA, Howard is Co-Chair for the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council Wildfire Working Group.
“In our sector – it doesn’t matter whether you’re an investor-owned utility, you’re a co-op or you’re a POU [publicly owned utility] – we have all been working” in a collaborative manner “to share information,” he said.
“We have been sharing near misses. We have been sharing information on equipment and we’ve been sharing a lot of information on new technology.”
Howard also noted that there are still “many utilities across the U.S. that do not have wildfire mitigation plans,” noting that many states do not require such plans. “So we are encouraging at the Wildfire Working Group that every utility at least go through and look at” developing a wildfire mitigation plan.
He noted that a number of wildfire mitigation plans are publicly available. “When we go out to speak to various utility groups that maybe haven’t yet adopted [a plan] – we say, don’t start fresh. Really, there’s just a number of incredible examples out there that are publicly available to you to look at.”
“We also do believe it’s prudent utility practice that they do look at putting a preventive power shut off program in place – hopefully, never to use and most of them don’t have risk, but if you don’t have it it’s really hard to implement one just in an emergency.”
Other panelists were:
• Mark Quinlan, Sr. Vice President, Wildfire and Emergency Operations, Pacific Gas and Electric Company
• Dr. Karim Al-Khafaji, Head of Business Development, Overstory
• Dr. Ali Arabnya, Director and Head of Power/Utilities Risk Management Practice, Quanta Technologies
• Sucheta Lakhani, Head of Utilities Practice, North America, Pano AI
• Brita Formato, President, Heimdall Power (also representing the WATT Coalition
NCPA Voices Support for Legislation
In related news, NCPA on Oct. 20 issued a statement in strong support of the bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act, ahead of the bill's scheduled markup on October 21, by the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
The committee on Oct. 21 passed its version of the Fix Our Forests Act by a bipartisan vote of 18-5.
"NCPA strongly supports the Fix Our Forests Act as essential and overdue legislation to improve the health and resilience of our nation's forests, which are vital for power reliability and public safety," said Howard, in an Oct. 20 NCPA news release. "We commend the sponsors of this bipartisan bill, which represents years of thoughtful work across two Congresses. This legislation builds on the strong momentum from the House, which passed its version of the bill earlier this year in January."
The Fix Our Forests Act provides critical tools to accelerate responsible forest management and fire mitigation efforts, NCPA said. We applaud the Senate Agriculture Committee for taking this important step to advance the legislation and urge its swift passage in the Senate and ultimate enactment into law. Prioritizing forest health is a critical component of a comprehensive approach to energy reliability in the face of growing wildfire risks,” NCPA said on Oct. 20.
Public Power and DOE Initiative Results in New Wildfire Mitigation Resources Available to APPA Members
A project involving the American Public Power Association, a group of APPA members and the Argonne National Laboratory focused on wildfire risk mitigation has resulted in new resources that can be utilized by the public power community.
This initiative, conducted in collaboration with the Argonne National Laboratory and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Grid Deployment Office (GDO), supports APPA’s goal of helping utilities strengthen their resilience to increasing wildfire risk.
The new resources are available on APPA’s wildfire mitigation planning webpage.
