Overview
SCE uses Technosylva to employ advanced fire spread and wildfire risk modeling tools to better assess wildfire consequences and impacts to public safety. Technosylva’s platform advances SCE’s PSPS risk calculations and identifies electrical system assets that could cause an ignition.
- 92% decrease in acres burned in 2021-2022 compared to 2017-2018
- 98% reduction in structures destroyed in 2021-2022 compared to 2017-2018
Watch & learn from a great discussion with Pedro Pizarro, CEO of Edison International, about how electric companies are finding success in hardening & adapting their grid to the growing threat of wildfire.
Improving PSPS Decision Making
From 2018-2022 SCE performed 90 PSPS de-energizations to avoid ignitions that threatened public safety.
SCE calculates the estimated number of fatalities and serious injuries based on a forecast of the impacted population within the Technosylva wildfire consequence simulation. This number, in turn, is converted into the Safety index. The resulting estimates of fatalities and serious injuries per customer minutes interrupted (CMI) are intended to approximate potential safety consequences due to the power outage, such as illnesses resulting from food spoilage or exacerbation of existing underlying health conditions.
SCE developed a PSPS risk calculation to more comprehensively account for PSPS risk reduction benefits, as well as risks associated with the use of PSPS for individual circuit segments.
”SCE estimates its wildfire mitigation and PSPS measures have reduced the risk of damage from catastrophic wildfires by 65 to 70%, relative to pre-2018 levels.
Kern Valley Sun
Fire Spread Modeling with Consequence Analysis
SCE utilizes the Technosylva-based wildfire mitigation platform to assess wildfire consequences based on utility asset location. SCE uses asset locations as ignition points for wildfire simulations and uses the results to associate consequences with that specific asset.
SCE uses Technosylva’s advanced fire spread modeling tools to simulate fire ignitions and subsequent consequences such as fire perimeter size, structures impacted, populations affected, and potential fatalities.
Improving & Ensuring Accurate Fuels Data
SCE has developed advanced analytical techniques using satellite image change detection and other processes to broadly detect and characterize changes in land use and land cover. LandFire 2016 updated with additional classifiers from Technosylva to better represent urban fuel, as well as a projection of fuel growth in major fire scars from previous fire seasons with a fuel regrowth projection to 2030.
Modeling Public Safety
Supporting Resource Response & Ignition Potential
SCE uses Technosylva’s’ estimates of buildings destroyed and response complexity to more accurately understand wildfire risk and prioritize mitigation efforts and priorities.
Utilizing Technosylva ignition simulation data, SCE determines which of SCE’s overhead structures could result in fires burning into Fire Risk Egress Constrained Areas. SCE then performs a calculation to identify which structures could potentially result in a fire trapping the public.
