KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
Officials with Southern California Edison (SCE) are aiming its attention at the effects of recent wildfires and public safety power shutoffs (PSPS) in and around the Santa Clarita Valley, in its annual update to the 2020-2022 Wildfire Mitigation Plan.
In its Feb. 5 update to the 2020-2022 Wildfire Mitigation Plan, SCE officials addressed several of the major problems associated with recent power shutoffs, as well as fire ignitions caused by utility infrastructure during extreme weather conditions.
Following SCE’s public meeting on Jan. 26, recommendations and customer comments after the turbulent 2020 fire season were taken into account by the company before the recent updates to the three year plan.
“The worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is undeniable, and some of our local communities had the added hardship of PSPS due to extreme weather conditions,” said Steve Powell, SCE’s executive vice president of Operations. “We share in the urgency in reducing wildfire risk, and our Wildfire Mitigation Plan reflects this. With safety as our number one priority, we will continue to focus on working to protect our communities regardless of what Mother Nature has in store for us.”
A new PSPS action plan is also slated to be filed on Feb. 12, which SCE believes will respond to the concerns of the affected SCE customers and communities in and around Santa Clarita Valley.
According to a statement issued by SCE, the company “will continue to review opportunities to accelerate mitigations for circuits that are frequently subject to PSPS events and evaluate new customer programs and resources.”
SCE’s statement also included its intention to focus on four key areas:
- Refining its high fire risk inspections strategy to include inspections in targeted areas based on emergent conditions, including fire weather conditions such as dry fuels
- Expanding its system hardening activities to include long-span remediation by installing line spacers on long power lines that are prone to conductor-to-conductor contact during windy conditions
- Establishing central data platforms for next-generation data analytics and governance;
- Improving fire agencies’ ability to detect and respond to emerging fires using satellite imagery and providing aerial fire suppression resources such as helitankers to fire agencies to help protect communities in SCE’s service area
Wildfire mitigation activities for SCE began as early as 2018, and company officials say they will continue to incorporate new lessons learned from the 2020 wildfires and recent customer feedback.
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Invest the money to underground utility lines and you eliminate most of the problems with downed power lines from high winds, earthquakes, ice storms, mylar balloons, etc., and save millions on maintenance too. If they had started the undergrounding process years ago, they would have completed the project by now instead of leaving us without communication methods, lights, heat, well water, internet, refrigeration for our food, or power for medical devices, all for many hours multiple times per year. Mismanagement of a vital resource continues!
If you need more employees to get the work done to complete this job to address our outages there are 11,000 Keystone pipe workers (out of a job) that you could get to dig the trenches. What about sprinkler systems under the electrical lines if you cannot clear the areas? Being shut off at Thanksgiving snd two days before Christmas (Christmas Eve) should never happen again.
Berta, Totally agree! SCE needs to invest in underground wiring NOW! Shutting off power every time we have a breeze is unacceptable.
Ca. has decided to get rid of gas lines & appliances in the near future, this means we have to rely on electricity!! SCE needs to act now and use the $$ they get from their customers to upgrade the system to underground wiring.