Duration: 1 hour

This informative webinar, in collaboration with Utility Dive, explores the tactics utilized by leading electric utilities to forecast, mitigate, and respond to wildfire risks and the associated liability.

As wildfires continue to increase in frequency and severity, they present a significant threat to electric utilities infrastructure and communities. Electric utilities face a risk stemming from their infrastructure to trigger wildfires and the liabilities that come with that.

Electric utilities can adopt proactive measures, such as preemptive power shutdowns to minimize the risk of wildfires and safeguard the areas in their service territory as well as using solutions that can help assess assets for mitigation purposes.

During the session, you will learn from Technosylva:

• Insights into the latest trends and patterns in wildfire behavior, and their implications for risk and liability exposure
• Methodologies for assessing wildfire risk and strategies for implementing effective mitigation measures
• Tools and techniques for real-time monitoring and response to wildfire threats

Speakers

The regulator’s question cut straight to the heart of the matter: “So you’re asking us to approve a multimillion-dollar program designed to turn off our customers’ power? How exactly do we explain that to our stakeholders?” The CEO of ElectriCo knew the follow-up questions were coming: What about the customer complaints? How do we handle the public backlash when people lose power during heat waves?

The CEO had anticipated this moment. For months, her team had been developing their Public Safety Power Shutoff program, driven by regulatory pressure and mounting wildfire liability. But although the fire safety logic was sound, PSPS events also brought negative customer response: angry residents, frustrated businesses, and heated community meetings. The technical planning was solid, the legal framework was clear, but sitting in that boardroom, she realized the hardest challenge wasn’t operational: it was cultural.

At the same time, her veteran operations supervisor was grappling with the same challenge from a different angle. After 25 years of perfecting one skill above all others (getting the lights back on as fast as possible), he was now being asked to lead the new “proactive outage team.” Outage duration had been his scorecard, system reliability his measure of success. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

“Help me understand this,” he told his manager during their planning session. “We’re building teams to deliberately cause outages, and we’re calling this progress?”

For electric utility leaders facing growing wildfire threats, these parallel conversations in boardrooms and operations centers capture the essential challenge: transforming an organization built on reliable power delivery into one that embraces proactive power removal for community safety.

When Split-Second Decisions Meet Century-Old Culture

The first reality electric utilities face is that wildfire response operates on an entirely different timeline than traditional utility operations. When meteorological conditions shift rapidly, teams have 48 to 72 hours to analyze vast service territories, assess thousands of assets, and notify potentially tens of thousands of customers.

This creates an immediate tension. Electric utilities must maintain their core operational excellence while building entirely new capabilities that operate under completely different rules. Start here: give your wildfire response teams clear decision-making authority and direct executive reporting lines, separate from traditional operations approval processes.

Beyond 50/50 Calls: Understanding Your Risk Appetite

Perhaps the most challenging cultural shift involves how electric utilities approach uncertainty. Traditional utility planning often seeks to eliminate uncertainty through comprehensive analysis and conservative safety margins. Wildfire response requires utilities to make consequential decisions based on probabilistic forecasts and incomplete information.

This forces a critical organizational conversation: what is your utility’s risk tolerance? A conservative approach might cast a wider net during PSPS events, potentially impacting more customers to ensure comprehensive safety coverage. A higher risk tolerance might focus more narrowly on high-confidence risk zones, trading some uncertainty for reduced customer impacts.

The essential first step: document your risk tolerance explicitly and train teams to apply it consistently under pressure.

Building the Teams That Make It Work

The operational reality of wildfire response demands teams that bridge meteorology, operations, customer communications, and emergency management. These teams must be available 24/7 during high-risk periods and capable of making consequential decisions in compressed timeframes.

For all utilities, staff training becomes critical, focusing on interpreting meteorological data, understanding the fundamentals of fire behavior, and executing protocols under pressure. Most importantly: identify the specific wildfire expertise your teams lack, then find external partners who can provide not just technology, but cultural wisdom from utilities who’ve already made this transition. Executive engagement proves essential, signaling that this represents a fundamental evolution in how the utility serves its communities.

The Path Forward

The electric utilities successfully navigating this transition share common characteristics: they’ve built specialized teams with clear decision-making authority, invested in comprehensive staff training, and secured executive leadership that champions proactive risk management.

The cultural shift isn’t just about accepting PSPS or other necessary tools. It’s about building organizations capable of protecting communities through decisive action, even when that action challenges traditional utility instincts. For electric utilities still building this culture, the communities you serve are counting on your ability to evolve quickly and completely.

Picture this scenario: At 2:47 AM on a wind-whipped October morning, an electric utility meteorologist stares at forecast models with growing unease. What had been predicted as manageable 35 mph winds twelve hours earlier now shows catastrophic potential: sustained winds of 45 mph with gusts reaching 70. In twelve hours, the electric utility might need to make a decision that would have been unthinkable just five years ago: intentionally cutting power for up to 50,000 customers in order to prevent a high-probability catastrophic wildfire.

For electric utilities in wildfire-risk areas nationwide, this scenario represents the new reality of operations. Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS), once a radical concept, have rapidly evolved into the new standard of care. Today, regulators don’t just expect electric utilities to have PSPS programs: they consider it negligent not to have them, even if they’re rarely used.

This requires electric utilities to embrace a fundamental change in mindset, from “we will never turn off the power” to “we will do everything in our power to create a safe community, and minimize the impact of PSPS if it needs to be used.” This comes with a change in operational approach, which requires data, precision and communication to approach PSPS surgically: only when necessary and only where necessary.

The Sprint Against Time

Unlike traditional electric utility operations that can unfold over days or weeks, PSPS decisions happen in a compressed timeframe that leaves no room for hesitation. Electric utilities have maybe 48 to 72 hours from the moment they can forecast high-risk conditions to the moment they need to notify customers. In that window, they’re analyzing thousands of assets, running risk calculations on hundreds of circuits, and making decisions that affect tens of thousands of lives.

This isn’t leisurely analysis: it’s a sprint requiring immediate action and coordinated responses. The process has evolved dramatically since those early days of broad shutoffs, with electric utilities developing increasingly precise approaches to minimize customer impacts while maintaining safety.

But this precision comes at a cost: the need for split-second decision-making under enormous pressure.

The Meteorologist’s Critical Role

In this new paradigm, electric utility meteorologists have become the first line of defense in wildfire prevention. No longer simply weather forecasters, they’re now critical decision-makers whose forecasts trigger million-dollar operational responses. Meteorologists who once focused on telling operations teams what weather to expect now must identify which areas face the highest ignition risk.

The integration between meteorology and operations has become seamless by necessity. Weather data flows directly into asset risk models, which feed into circuit-level decision matrices, which trigger customer notification systems—all within hours of a forecast update.

Building Your Decision-Making Framework

For electric utilities developing or refining their PSPS capabilities, the operational challenge centers on key questions that must be answered before the next high-risk weather event:

Decision Prioritization: What sequence of decisions needs to be established in advance? How do you move from weather forecast to asset evaluation to customer notification in compressed timeframes? Which decisions can be made in parallel, and which must follow a specific order?

Rapid Asset Evaluation: When analyzing thousands of assets under time pressure, how do you prioritize which circuits or equipment to evaluate first? What criteria determine high-priority versus lower-priority areas for immediate risk assessment?

Internal Capability Requirements: What roles and expertise need to be available 24/7 during high-risk periods? How do you structure teams to enable rapid decision-making across meteorology, operations, and customer communications?

Communication Coordination: How do you ensure seamless information flow from weather forecasting through operational decisions to customer notifications? What internal processes prevent communication delays when every hour matters?

These questions don’t have universal answers: each electric utility’s responses will depend on their specific territory, asset configuration, and risk profile. But addressing them in advance creates the foundation for effective PSPS decision-making when time is critical.

The Path Forward

The evolution is measurable: PG&E has brought down its number of impacted customers by over 10x per year through wildfire forecasting, asset-level risk analysis, and circuit control improvements since 2018. What once seemed like an impossible balance (safety and reliability) has become the new standard of excellence.

For electric utility leaders still navigating this transition, PSPS isn’t just another tool in the wildfire mitigation toolkit. It’s a fundamental reimagining of what it means to serve communities responsibly in an era of climate risk. The electric utilities that thrive will be those that embrace this paradigm shift completely, investing in the meteorological capabilities, operational precision, and community relationships that make PSPS not just possible, but optimized and exemplary.

The lights may go out by design, but the mission has never been clearer: keeping communities safe through decisive operational decision-making.

For decades, electric utilities have relied on seasonal planning, historical averages, and static risk assessments to guide grid resiliency decisions. That era is over.

Today’s threat landscape moves faster than traditional tools can track. Wildfires ignite outside of fire season. Other extreme weather events, like flooding, overtake grid infrastructure. Wind events cripple urban service territories. And the expectations from regulators, insurers, and investors are shifting just as fast.

In a recent POWER Magazine webinar, leaders from CenterPoint Energy and Technosylva offered a firsthand look at how AI, machine learning, and real-time weather modeling can be embedded into grid strategy. The message was clear: electric utilities must evolve from risk awareness to risk accountability, and fast.

Wildfire and Extreme Weather Risk Is Local, But the Shift Is Industry-Wide

CenterPoint Energy’s service territory is not traditionally viewed as wildfire territory. Yet FEMA’s wildfire risk map revealed that Harris County has more wildfire-prone census tracts than any other county in the country.

This single insight reframed their resilience planning. It also underscored a larger truth: regional assumptions are outdated. Every electric utility, regardless of location, must be prepared for compound weather risk and multi-hazard disruption.

AI-Powered Modeling Changes What’s Possible

Technosylva’s platform simulates wildfire and extreme weather scenarios using real-time data and advanced weather forecasts. For electric utilities, that means:

• Forecasting outage severity days in advance
• Calculating risk at the circuit level
• Prioritizing grid hardening where the data shows it matters most
• Improving restoration timelines and customer communication

This is not theoretical. Don Daigler, Senior Vice President of Emergency Preparedness and Response at CenterPoint Energy, shared that modeling is helping CenterPoint estimate how many crews they may need, how long restoration could take, and where to place staging areas based on forecasted conditions.

From Resilience to Regulatory Alignment

AI and modeling are not just about mitigation. They are fast becoming the foundation of regulatory and financial credibility.

Regulators are asking more pointed questions. Credit rating agencies want to see data-backed resilience plans. Insurers are tightening coverage, if they offer it at all. Stakeholders at every level are demanding more than good intentions. They expect electric utilities to demonstrate readiness with operational data.

The implications are clear: resilience strategy is no longer internal. It is visible, judged, and tied directly to access to capital, regulatory standing, and public trust.

Looking Ahead: Integration Is the Imperative

Leading electric utilities are doing more than evaluating software or building dashboards. They are integrating modeling into core operations, breaking silos between emergency preparedness, asset planning, and enterprise risk. They are training operators on live situational awareness and modeling impact. And they are aligning their planning with regulatory frameworks from day one.

The next phase of utility resilience is not about adopting a tool. It is about building a system of accountability that is driven by real-time intelligence and aligned with what is at stake – financially, operationally, and reputationally.

Watch the webinar replay below to get more depth from the conversation

As extreme weather intensifies, utilities are under pressure to rethink how they plan, respond, and invest in grid resilience. In a recent session hosted by POWER Magazine, Don Daigler, SVP of Emergency Preparedness and Response at CenterPoint Energy, joined experts from Technosylva to explore how AI and weather modeling are beginning to inform utility strategies, and where the industry is headed next.

Whether you’re just starting to explore these tools or already building your capabilities, the conversation highlighted early lessons that can help guide smarter, more adaptive decision-making.

Here are five key takeaways from that discussion:

1. Traditional Tools Alone Cannot Handle Today’s Risk

From wildfires and hurricanes to flooding and extreme wind, weather threats are increasing in both severity and complexity. Static assessments and after-the-fact analysis are no longer enough. Electric utilities must shift from reacting to predicting, and from predicting to pre-positioning.

2. All-Hazards Strategy Is the Only Way Forward

Daigler emphasized that, “80 to 90 percent of what you do for one hazard applies to another.” Electric utilities need flexible, integrated planning that treats all major weather threats as systemic risk factors that require real-time situational awareness.

3. Predictive Modeling Supports Smarter Decisions at All Levels

Technosylva’s wildfire and extreme weather risk modeling is helping electric utilities forecast event severity, asset impact, and restoration timelines with circuit-level precision. Daigler explained how this approach supports decisions about how many resources will be needed, how long it may take to restore power, and where to position staging sites.

These insights are starting to influence both strategic planning and daily operations, from crew readiness to customer communication.

4. Modeling Must Be Local and Operationally Aligned

CenterPoint Energy’s territory isn’t typically thought of as wildfire-prone, yet FEMA’s wildfire risk map showed Harris County has more wildfire-prone census tracts than any other county in the U.S. The lesson is clear: no region is immune. Electric utilities cannot assume risk is someone else’s problem. Modeling must be adapted to local hazards, grounded in operational realities, and aligned with regulatory and emergency response goals.

5. AI and Data Are Now Core to Resilience and Stakeholder Accountability

Regulators, credit rating agencies, and insurers are increasingly focused on how electric utilities use data to support mitigation strategies. Integrating AI and machine learning for modeling into daily operations is becoming essential for building credibility, managing financial exposure, and improving long-term resilience.

Watch the webinar replay below to get more depth from the conversation

Why Electric Utilities Must Move Beyond Forecasts to Climatological Foresight

Electric utilities today face a growing and unpredictable threat: the Black Swan event — a rare but devastating natural catastrophe that can cripple infrastructure and disrupt entire communities. As wildfires and extreme weather events become more frequent and intense, relying solely on traditional weather forecasts is no longer enough.

In a recent Utility Dive piece, Steve Vanderburg, Technosylva’s Vice President for Weather & Risk Solutions, explored how electric utilities can better anticipate and mitigate these high-impact events. Drawing from his experience across government and electric utility roles, he emphasizes the critical need for electric utilities to incorporate climatology, the study of long-term weather patterns, into their risk management strategies.

Here are 3 key takeaways for electric utilities aiming to future-proof their grid

• Forecasts show the weather. Climatology shows the why behind the risk
  Traditional weather forecasting tells you what’s coming. But without the context of historical weather extremes, it’s hard to know whether an event is routine or unprecedented. Understanding that a wind event, for example, is in the 99.5th percentile of past data can change the entire response strategy.
• Climatology reveals anomalies — and that’s where Black Swans hide.
  Wildfires in regions with little prior history, like Oregon’s 2020 Labor Day fires, show how fast the risk landscape can shift. Localized climatological modeling can identify those rare but high-impact scenarios before they happen.
• Local fire weather behavior is key to smarter decisions.
  A 40 mph gust isn’t the same everywhere. Trees in wind-sheltered zones respond differently than those accustomed to strong gusts. Understanding these localized dynamics helps set better thresholds for action and improve operational resilience.

By understanding the historical climatological context of their service areas, electric utilities can better identify anomalies in current weather patterns and shift from reactive responses to proactive risk mitigation. That means greater accuracy, earlier warnings and a stronger, resilient grid.

Read his full article in Utility Dive to learn how electric utilities are leveraging climatology, ignition modeling, wildfire spread predictions, and impact analysis to forecast risk days in advance. See how leading electric utilities are applying these tools like weather forecasts, ignition models, on-demand wildfire spread predictions, in practice to forecast & monitor wildfire risks before disaster strikes.

Duration: 1 Hour

Electric utilities are facing increasingly complex weather threats, from wildfire to extreme weather events impacting grid reliability. In this webinar, CenterPoint Energy and Technosylva explore how machine learning, predictive modeling, and AI are supporting more informed, data-driven critical decisions around grid readiness, resource planning, and resilience.

Whether you’re in early planning or already evaluating tools, this session offers practical insights for what comes next.

Get 5 key takeaways from the conversation
Inside the industry’s evolving approach to climate risk

Speakers

Electric utilities across the nation are under immense pressure to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of their wildfire exposure to stakeholders—communities, creditors, regulators, insurers, and boards. However, a fundamental problem lies in the reliance on traditional, static risk assessments. These assessments, while earnestly detailed, create an illusion of preparedness that leaves electric utilities vulnerable to a fundamental truth: fire is dynamic.

The Disconnect Between Static Data and Analyzing Dynamic Risk

Traditional risk assessments provide a fixed snapshot, relying on historical data, terrain analysis, fuel assessments, and extreme scenario modeling, such as the ‘1-in-100-year event.’ While these elements are valuable for establishing a baseline understanding, they are literally obsolete for decision making purposes before they are completed.

Wildfire risk changes from season to season, month to month, day to day and even hour to hour with the weather and its ongoing impact on the terrain and local vegetation.

For electric utilities facing any ignition risk, relying on static assessments is akin to hiking in the woods with an outdated map. The illusion of control offered by a fixed assessment can lead to catastrophic consequences when faced with the daily fluctuations and unpredictable nature of actual wildfire risk.

If you’re reading this blog, the data suggests that you’re right in believing that your risk may be more than you think.

Dynamic Risk Analysis Provides Clarity on Real Risk

Dynamic risk analysis helps to keep the “map” of fire risk up to date at all times, both for planning and operational decisions.

Dynamic risk analysis: builds upon the foundation of a risk assessment by incorporating real-time and forecasted weather data, including granular, commercial-grade weather information. This approach:

• Reduces Wildfire Ignitions: Proactive mitigation based on dynamic risk analysis can significantly reduce the likelihood of electric utility-caused ignitions.
• Creates More Surgical PSPS: By forecasting high-risk periods and locations, electric utilities can better anticipate the need for Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS), reducing the time and areas of customer disruptions and associated safety risks.
• Improves Decision-Making: Real-time and forecasted risk data empowers electric utilities to make more informed decisions about resource allocation, emergency preparedness, and public communication.
• Enhances Stakeholder Communication: Dynamic risk analysis provides concrete data that electric utilities can use to demonstrate their commitment to wildfire safety to regulators, insurers, credit agencies, investors, and community stakeholders.
• Increases the Cost Effectiveness of Vegetation Management and Asset Hardening: With real-time and forecasted risk information, electric utilities can implement more effective mitigation strategies such as targeted vegetation management based on changing conditions, prioritized inspections and equipment maintenance, and ongoing updates of the most critical assets for hardening and capital improvements.

What’s in Dynamic Risk Analysis?

To be effective in providing these benefits, Dynamic Risk Analysis must include:

• Simulation of Wildfire Ignition and Spread: These models not only predict the likelihood of ignition but also simulate how a fire might spread under specific conditions, giving utilities a better understanding of potential impacts.
• A Real-Time View: By integrating current weather conditions and fuel moisture levels, dynamic analysis offers a constantly updated picture of wildfire risk across a utility’s service area.
• Forecasting: Coupled with weather forecasts, dynamic analysis predicts future wildfire risk, allowing utilities to anticipate high-risk periods and take proactive measures.

The Bottom Line

Many electric utilities today make the dangerous assumption that a static, historical snapshot of wildfire risk is sufficient for managing a dynamic, ever-evolving threat. Relying on these outdated assessments leaves electric utilities blind to the real-time fluctuations and forecasted dangers that directly impact ignition and spread potential.

The strongest utilities embrace dynamic risk analysis, integrating real-time and forecasted data, to demonstrate to themselves, their customers, and their financial stakeholders that they are proactively mitigating the escalating threat of wildfire.

The increasing threat of catastrophic wildfires is forcing a contradiction between two of the fundamental aspects of the utility compact – safe and reliable power.

Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS), or the de-energization of lines that are likely to cause an ignition during a weather event, have become a critical tool for wildfire prevention and mitigation.

PSPS represents a collision between the industry’s core operations, focused on continuous reliable service, and the new reality of wildfire risk, which necessitates proactive, disruptive interventions for safety.

This collision demands a complete cultural overhaul, not just operational adjustments.

Although it’s often described as a “measure of last resort” in an electric utility’s wildfire mitigation toolbox, PSPS is an increasingly necessary tool. The decision to implement a PSPS is never taken lightly, as it represents a significant operational and cultural shift.

However, allowing Mother Nature to take control during extreme weather can lead to uncontrolled outages, sparking ignitions and potentially catastrophic wildfires.

More and more, leading utilities are adopting a more “Surgical PSPS”, which uses better intelligence about ignition risk to minimize the outage area and impact fewer people.

The Evolving Standard of Care

PSPS is rapidly becoming the new standard of care for electric utilities, even those in lower-risk areas. Regulators increasingly expect electric utilities to have a PSPS program in place, regardless of whether they anticipate using it. This reflects the growing recognition of wildfire risk and the need for proactive mitigation.

Operationalizing PSPS

Implementing a PSPS is often new and takes work, but can be well within the capabilities and budgets of utilities who want to evolve quickly to protect their customers and grid.

• It begins with the weather conditions: identifying impending weather conditions that combine with local risk factors (fuels and terrain) to create high fire risk. Electric utilities must pinpoint the specific areas and assets at risk.
• Electric utilities often have a 48-72 hour customer notification requirement before a PSPS event. This tight timeframe can put pressure on operations. Analyzing thousands of miles of power lines and hundreds of circuits to determine the scope of a PSPS requires rapid data processing and decision-making. Delays in meteorological forecasting or internal analysis can significantly impact an electric utility’s ability to meet notification deadlines and execute a PSPS effectively. Dynamic data for decision-making is key.
• Beyond the technical challenges, PSPS involves a significant human element. Electric utility personnel must make difficult decisions that impact thousands of customers. Public safety needs must be balanced against the disruption caused by power outages. In addition to the actual decision-making, the best PSPS programs communicate well with customers before, during and after an event, sharing both the information as well as being more transparent about the logic applied to keep people as safe as possible.

The Bottom Line

PSPS is a complex and challenging but crucial tool for wildfire mitigation. Electric utilities can develop robust PSPS programs and embrace a proactive safety culture, where PSPS is not seen as a failure, but as a necessary tool for protecting communities. This requires a fundamental cultural shift, not just operational adjustments, but in the ability to redefine the core mission in the face of escalating wildfire risk.

Electric utility risk managers are facing a critical credibility crisis.
While asset-caused wildfire ignitions are a longstanding challenge, the escalating frequency and severity of these events, coupled with the specter liability, have fundamentally altered the landscape.

The disconnect is growing between the elevated perceived risk and the actions by electric utilities to keep up with that risk.
This disconnect is not only impacting insurance costs but also directly threatening credit ratings, placing the financial health of electric utilities nationwide at risk.

The Insurance Industry’s Demand for Measurable Mitigation

Insurers are no longer satisfied with simple risk assessments.
They are demanding concrete evidence of quantifiable risk reduction.

However, most electric utilities struggle to demonstrate and quantify the effectiveness of their mitigation efforts.

Insurers are seeking data that proves a direct correlation between investments and reduced net risk, a higher level of transparency and accountability than have been required historically.

The Credit Agency Perspective is Changing

Credit rating agencies have become deeply involved in assessing wildfire risk, particularly with their long history of engagement with California utilities.

Credit rating agencies are now moving beyond geographic risk assessments and delving into the specifics of utility operations and planning.

Beyond the ‘checkbox’ of a Wildfire Management Plan, agencies are scrutinizing everything from EOC capabilities to the implementation of enhanced trip settings and PSPS, highlighting the need for a comprehensive, data-driven approach to risk mitigation.

Many utilities lack the robust technological infrastructure and operational procedures necessary to demonstrate effective wildfire risk management, placing them both at operational risk for a wildfire, and at financial risk for a credit downgrade.

A Shifting Landscape

A 2024 report by the economic consulting firm, Charles River Associates, indicates over 100 electric utilities have experienced credit downgrades due to wildfire risk.

Even electric utilities in historically “low-risk” areas are being penalized for a lack of demonstrable situational awareness and operational control.

This shift in market perspective underscores the urgent need for them to move beyond reactive measures and implement proactive, data-driven strategies that can be clearly communicated to insurers and credit rating agencies.

The Bottom Line

The future of electric utility financial stability hinges on their ability to move beyond simply assessing wildfire risk.

Successful utilities today demonstrate proactive, data-driven mitigation strategies that are transparent and quantifiable to their insurers, their creditors, their regulators and their communities..

This is not just about securing insurance or maintaining creditworthiness; it’s about building trust with stakeholders and ensuring the long-term resilience of the utility in an increasingly fire-prone environment.

The credibility crisis demands a shift from passive risk assessment to active, demonstrable risk control.

Electric utility risk managers nationwide are confronting an escalating challenge: the low probability, high consequence wildfire event.

While predicting ignition points is a crucial first step, there is a dangerous misconception that preventing ignitions equates to mitigating overall wildfire risk.

Focusing solely on where and if a fire might start ignores the critical question of what happens when it does. This gap leaves electric utilities vulnerable to catastrophic outcomes, even with robust ignition prevention efforts.

It only takes one bad wildfire to change the entire future of a community and the utility that serves it.

As climate change fuels drought and increases energy demand, electric utilities in every state – this is no longer a problem of the West alone – face mounting pressure to explain to their communities, creditors and boards how they are mitigating wildfire risk and strengthening their reliability.

The Problem: Ignition Probability isn’t Actual Risk

The critical error many electric utilities make is equating ignition prediction with comprehensive risk assessment.

Ignition prediction is essentially the probability that an ignition will occur at a point, but risk is typically measured as probability of an event multiplied with the consequences of that event.

Wildfire risk is not merely about the likelihood of a fire starting; it’s about the magnitude of the potential consequences if one does.

A small fire in a remote, sparsely populated area poses a drastically different risk than a faster spreading fire near a densely populated community or critical infrastructure.

Focusing solely on ignition prediction fails to account for the potential for widespread damage, loss of life, and economic disruption.

This approach leads to a dangerous blind spot, where utilities may believe they have adequately mitigated risk by focusing on ignition prevention, while remaining dangerously exposed to the devastating consequences of a large-scale wildfire. Without understanding the potential consequence of a fire, prioritizing mitigation efforts becomes guesswork rather than a data-driven strategy.

The Challenge to Address

For this critical decision-making, electric utilities need to combine ignition probability with consequence analysis. This means:

• Quantifying Impact: Consequence modeling quantifies the potential damage of a fire, including impacts on human life, property, and infrastructure. This data is essential for prioritizing mitigation efforts and targeting asset-hardening under limited budgets and rate increase abilities.
• Forecasting Fire Spread: Advanced fire spread modeling, integrated with weather forecasts, can predict the path and impact of a fire originating from a specific asset. This allows utilities to identify the most dangerous potential ignitions.
• Understanding Asset-Specific Risk: Every asset has a unique ignition probability based on its condition, age, surrounding environment, and other factors. Electric utilities can analyze historical ignition data alongside potential fire spread models to understand the impact of a fire (ignition probability and consequence) originating from each asset.

Prioritizing Hardening with Risk Spend Efficiency (RSE)

With limited resources, electric utilities need to maximize the impact of their mitigation investments.

Consequence-based risk modeling allows for the calculation of improved Risk Spend Efficiency (RSE). RSE measures the risk reduction achieved per dollar invested in hardening. By prioritizing assets with the highest RSE, utilities can achieve the greatest risk reduction for their budget.

The Bigger Picture: Moving from Planning to Operations

Safety and risk management are driving the adoption of consequence-based modeling, but the benefits extend beyond planning.

Understanding wildfire risk improves operational efficiency and informs critical decisions like Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) during an extreme weather event. As wildfire severity and frequency increase, this data-driven approach has become essential for all electric utilities.

Looking Ahead

The future of wildfire risk management for electric utilities depends on moving beyond the limited scope of ignition prediction.

By embracing consequence-based risk modeling, electric utilities can gain the critical insights needed to prioritize asset hardening, optimize mitigation strategies, and ultimately, protect communities and infrastructure from the devastating impacts of wildfire. The widening of risk management from solely preventing fires to understanding and mitigating their potential consequences is no longer optional, it is an imperative.

The Big Picture

Electric utility risk managers face a new and increasingly critical challenge: effectively communicating wildfire risk and mitigation efforts to a concerned public.

This isn’t just about providing information; it’s about building trust with customers and stakeholders in the face of potentially disruptive and controversial measures like Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS).

The gap is widening between the complex realities of wildfire risk management and the broad understanding of those realities.

Failure to bridge this gap can lead to backlash, erode trust, and hinder an electric utility’s ability to implement necessary risk reduction strategies.

Customers Will Be Increasingly Impacted by Wildfire Operations

• Customers Need To Be Brought Along: Framing PSPS as a “last resort” is often insufficient. The reality is that it’s becoming a necessary standard of care.
  The problem is changing public perception to understand that PSPS are not failures but a critical tool to prevent catastrophic outcomes, especially those “1 in 100 year” events that are becoming more frequent.
• The New Reality of Wildfire Operations: Although PSPS is the ‘measure of last resort’, the increasing frequency of them, combined with the inherent disruption they cause, can create a significant trust deficit.
  Customers, creditors, and boards are demanding transparency and justification for these measures.
  Without clear and consistent communication, electric utilities risk alienating their stakeholders and facing severe reputational damage.

What Utilities Can Start To Do Differently in Customer Communications

• Demystifying Risk Mitigation: Simply documenting risk reduction efforts isn’t enough. Utilities must translate complex technical information—investments in fire science, operational improvements, etc.—into clear, accessible language that resonates with the public. It’s not just about what information to communicate, but also how to communicate it most effectively.
• Explaining the Avoided Tragedy: While post-PSPS simulations can demonstrate effectiveness, the abstract nature of “avoided risk” can be difficult for the public to grasp.
  Leading electric utilities are sharing their forecast and simulation estimates, in terms of buildings and people in harm’s way, to show communities that they are being considered in these decisions.
• Proactive Communication, Beyond PSPS: True engagement requires collaboration and understanding the specific needs of at-risk communities.
  Before events, leading electric utilities are building genuine partnerships, incorporating community feedback into PSPS planning and becoming publicly visible with their proactive mitigation efforts.

There is increased public scrutiny of electric utility wildfire risk management practices.

This calls for the development of standardized communication protocols for PSPS events and the use of technology to enhance communication and community engagement to ensure the evolution of public perception of PSPS as a valued and successful risk mitigation tool.