Eighty U.S. Wildfires Are Burning Right Now: What Electric Utilities Can Learn From California’s Experience

After the Aug. 8 wildfire that leveled most of Lahaina, Maui, people outside of utilities and states prone to the disasters took notice. Wildfire causes and prevention entered mainstream conversations across the globe.

On Aug. 28, 80 current wildfires burned 657,822 acres in 14 states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). The previous day, two new fires erupted in Oregon. Another popped up in Texas. (See NASA’s live fire map here.) More than 20,400 wildland firefighters are responding. Data from the NIFC shows that in 2023, 38,831 wildfires have burned 1.9 million acres in the U.S. Six of those current fires are in California, a state where electric utilities know the financial and legal exposure related to wildfires. 

“With climate change fully upon us, a comprehensive and continuously improving approach to wildfire mitigation and prevention is a core part of utilities’ operations and approach to risk mitigation,” said Dave Canny, senior director of wildfire mitigation at PG&E Corp., based in San Francisco.

“We need to partner with each other — utility to utility, customers, vendors and other stakeholders — to deliver on mitigating this evolving and growing threat,” he said.

Canny is one of several California wildfire mitigation experts who will discuss related electric utility challenges during a Sept. 12 panel, “California Wildfire Mitigation Plans and Strategies.” The session is part of the T&D World Live Conference in Sacramento, California. Panelists joining Canny will be: Thuan Tran, principal manager of asset engineering at Southern California Edison (SCE); and Suzie Rose, program and project supervisor of the Electric Safety Policy Division at the California Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety. Laura Manz, principal of L J Manz Consulting, will moderate.

Rose, whose office is responsible for evaluating the wildfire risk reduction efforts of California’s electrical corporations, will discuss technical aspects of the state’s guidelines. Canny and Tran will share their utilities’ latest wildfire strategies and mitigation measures, including SCE’s three-layer approach to wildfire mitigation.

Tran, an electrical engineer who joined SCE after graduating from the University of California, Irvine, will discuss grid hardening, detection and asset monitoring systems, and testing advanced protection schemes. He called the session “crucial to the industry” and said utilities can see an example of how to approach and implement wildfire mitigation standards by learning and understanding the ignition root cause and developing solutions to execution.

“This would be helpful to other utilities that are facing the same challenges,” Tran said. “The takeaway is that there’s no one solution to wildfire mitigation, but multiple layers in solving the problem.”