Even before the 2020 Oregon wildfire season devastated various parts of the state, Portland General Electric was amping up its intelligence network with a wildfire mitigation plan.
Kellie Cloud, PGE senior director of wildfire and operational compliance, said that mitigation plan began in 2018. When those high winds hit, PGE was ready to shut down power in the electrical utility’s Mount Hood zone, which is considered a high-risk zone.
“Essentially, we had a PSPS (public safety power shutoff) plan. We had started modeling and were very fortunate. At that time, we only had one zone — on Mount Hood — and we implemented a PSPS in that zone.”
Since that shutdown, PGE has expanded by 10 the number of high-risk fire zones where the company can shut power off immediately. They include areas in Multnomah, Clackamas, Marion, Yamhill, Washington and Polk counties, with cities like Oregon City, Estacada, Portland’s West Hills, the Tualatin Mountains (West Hills or Southwest Hills of Portland) and more.
The newest is zone 11, which includes southwest of Salem and the Salem Hills area, an area that was added this year.
“They were not considered to be at risk and some of it is the methodology changing as we learn more,” Cloud said about adding more high-risk zones. “Some of it is the weather conditions — the drought — (and) how that’s impacting the fuels.”
The extreme drought the area has suffered over the last couple of years has driven up wildfire risk.
‘Every single year, we are learning’
PGE’s risk modeling looks at where the company has equipment, where there is fuel for a wildfire to spread, where there are areas where wildfire detection might be slower or if there’s the possibility of a slower response times when determining those locations.
“Every single year, we are learning. We are learning more about our equipment, and what’s contributing to ignitions. We learn more about the health of the vegetation. We learn more about the fire agencies — what’s working, what’s not,” Cloud said recently during a briefing of PGE’s third wildfire mitigation plan at the utility’s Integrated Operations Center in Tualatin earlier this month.
The center oversees any problems that might affect the public utility’s 4,000-square-mile service area and monitors electrical emergencies. The facility also has the ability to stand up to the Cascadia subduction zone earthquake, a predicted 9.0-plus magnitude earthquake expected to hit the Pacific coast at some point.
Not surprisingly, PGE officials keep a wary eye on vegetation near power lines, with 85% of recorded ignitions resulting from vegetation — branches, trees, etc. — coming into contact with overhead wires. Those same culprits also play a large part when it comes to power outages in general.
Hardening the hardware
One way to help prevent wildfires is so-called “hardening” of PGE hardware, a long-term strategy to prevent those fires.
Some of that hardening includes the use of fire-safe fuses — replacing those old traditional fuses that pose a greater risk of igniting. Another is to use mesh wraps on its electrical poles, which provide a fire-resistant barrier.
Covered or insulated wires also help because, “If a tree branch falls on it, it’s not going to ignite,” said Cloud.
Once a small branch falls on a line, it draws an arc that PGE can detect and then turn off the power.
“It deenergizes the circuit very quickly, almost instantaneously,” said Cloud. “The hope is that once the arc is extinguished, the branch falls to the ground.”
The system then automatically tries to restore itself, something that works better in the winter, spring and fall. However, during the summer fire season, PGE will only try to reenergize once in an effort to avoid a wildfire.
But wind and weather often have a part to play, and if a large Douglas fir tree falls down, those overhead wires will go down as well.
Enter “undergrounding”— burying those wires out of sight such is done in new subdivisions — in an effort that has proved to be the single most effective way of keeping wires from causing problems.
It’s also the most expensive.
Adding AI to the fire lines
What has aided PGE in wildfire detection over the years is the help of 33 high-tech artificial intelligence cameras that it uses to quickly detect ignitions in the service area. The public utility also has access to 82 weather stations that aid in detecting wildfires as well.
“We share that information with other first responders. We are not a bottleneck, and we have received very positive feedback on how effective this is,” said Cloud. The weather stations help identify high-risk areas, and PGE is also installing early fault detection, which alerts staff when it’s getting time to replace certain equipment before an outage or fire occurs.
The AI cameras, first deployed beginning in 2021, can be used for smoke detection or to identify heat during the night, according to Lisa Kriederman, a PGE meteorologist.
She said the nice thing about the cameras is that they can detect a wildfire’s location accurately up to 100 yards, which they then can share with fire departments.
Meanwhile, the weather stations now have vegetation sensors that tell how much moisture is there as well as the temperature of the fuel wildfires might use, said Kriederman. During the recent massive February ice storm that took out power to numerous communities, a few of PGE’s weather stations continued thanks to backup solar-powered batteries.
Brett Phillips, PGE senior manager for wildfire operations program management, said it was an AI camera that detected the 2023 Camp Creek Fire near Bull Run where lightning came through and caused a number of fires. That information was then passed on to the U.S. Forest Service.
“I think they may have been first on the scene, and they were able to get there almost immediately where they may have been waiting until the next day before they identified this particular fire. So it saved a lot of time. Even though that was a long event, it saved a lot of time and helped them already start thinking about resources early that morning.”
Phillips said those cameras can see between 10 miles-30, depending on the weather conditions.
Meteorologist Kriederman said this summer seems like it will be be warmer and drier than normal, and she’s keeping an eye open for any heat dome event like the area experienced several years ago. Still, it’s too far out to predict a heat dome, which involves a quick-moving weather pattern.
Meanwhile, PGE is continuing to get a jump on wildfire mitigation by training 1,500 of its employees on basic wildfire suppression techniques and what to do to prepare for such wildfires.
(This story corrects a previous version by identifying the weather conditions that resulted in PGE shutting down its Mt. Hood high-risk fire zone during the 2020 wildfires.)
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