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

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.

Duration: 45 minutes

As wildfire threats grow in more regions, electric utilities need to rethink how they assess and manage risk. In this webinar, Technosylva’s Steve Vanderburg explains why it’s critical to shift from static assessments to dynamic, real-time tools.

Learn how utilities are using advanced modeling, AI, and weather data to:

• Move from one-time assessments to continuous risk analysis
• Make real-time operational decisions during fire events
• Prioritize mitigation efforts with circuit-level precision
• Strengthen wildfire response plans and infrastructure protection

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 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 daunting challenge: accurately predicting and mitigating wildfire risk in an increasingly volatile environment.

Red Flag Warnings, issued by the National Weather Service, are often used as a critical tool in this effort. They provide a seemingly clear indication of high-risk fire weather conditions. However, the reality is far more complex.

The gap between the broad warnings and the specific needs of utilities is the core problem that must be addressed.

While Red Flag Warnings are essential for general public awareness, they fall short of providing the precise, actionable intelligence electric utilities need to protect their infrastructure and communities.

The Catch

Spread vs. Start: Why That Difference Matters

There is a critical difference between fire spread and fire starts. The primary focus of Red Flag Warnings is on the spread of existing fires. This is crucial for public safety, but it doesn’t directly translate to the risk of ignition from electric utility infrastructure or other sources.

An electric utility’s greatest concern, and ability to mitigate a fire, is often the initial spark, which can be triggered by seemingly less severe conditions than those just examined for rapid fire spread. Therefore, basing operational decisions solely on Red Flag Warnings can lead to either over or under-reaction.

Red Flag Warnings cover broad geographic areas, often spanning entire counties or regions. Electric utilities, however, need to pinpoint risks at the circuit level, so they can act to mitigate the threat.

The Red Flag Warning’s lack of granularity can lead to inefficient resource allocation and unnecessary operational disruptions, or worse yet, inaction.

Dry Lightning Adds Hidden Complexity

In addition, when electric utilities base their situational awareness on Red Flag Warnings, they can misinterpret the consequences of “dry lightning”, which are included under the Red Flag scope but represent a fundamentally different risk profile.

Dry lightning is lightning that strikes the ground absent of significant rainfall. This makes it particularly dangerous because it can easily ignite dry vegetation, leading to wildfires without the natural suppression of accompanying rain.

Why This Can Quickly Spiral

This can lead to the potential for numerous, simultaneous ignitions; a scenario that can quickly overwhelm resources regardless of wind speed or humidity.

This requires a completely different operational response than warnings driven by wind and ignoring the unique challenges of dry lightning can leave electric utilities vulnerable to widespread, uncontrollable fires.

Relying solely on Red Flag Warnings can lead to:

• Overreaction: Implementing costly and disruptive measures, like widespread PSPS, when the actual risk to infrastructure is localized or less severe and a surgical approach would have the same efficacy against the fire.
• Underreaction too: Failing to take necessary precautions when localized ignition risks are high, even if the overall Red Flag Warning doesn’t seem dire.
• Inefficient Resource: Allocation: Deploying resources across a broad area when the true risk is concentrated in specific locations ignitions.
• Liability Exposure: Making operational decisions based on incomplete data, potentially leading to preventable ignitions and subsequent legal repercussions.

How Utilities Can Respond—and Improve

Red Flag Warnings are a valuable piece of the puzzle, but not the whole picture. To change, electric utility risk managers can:

• Understand the Nuances: Recognize that not all Red Flag Warnings are created equal. Train teams to ask deeper questions about what’s happening in their environment, and how they should react to different conditions. Dry lightning warnings, for example, require a different response than warnings based on wind and low humidity.
• Operationalize Granular Data: Don’t rely solely on the broad geographic scope of Red Flag Warnings. Supplement them with more precise data that pinpoints specific areas of risk within their service territory, and operationalizes the response to the granular data in resource deployment, asset hardening, vegetation management and PSPS plans.
• Integrate with Broader Information and Risk Assessment: Use Red Flag Warnings as one input among many in a comprehensive wildfire risk assessment. Consider factors like fuel conditions, topography, and proximity to utility infrastructure.

Red Flag Warnings are a valuable starting point, but they represent only a fraction of the information electric utility risk managers need.

The core problem is the need for precise, localized, and ignition-focused risk assessments.

By recognizing the limitations of broad public warnings and actively seeking more granular data, utilities can move beyond reactive responses and develop proactive strategies that safeguard their infrastructure, communities, and financial stability.

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.

The Big Picture

Wildfire, once perceived as a “California problem”, has exploded into a nationwide crisis for electric utilities, driven by escalating liability, growing regulatory demands, and investor anxiety.

The 2023 Lahaina Fire served as a stark wake-up call, forcing electric utilities across the country to confront the existential threat of wildfire and has since been followed by several catastrophic and deadly fires.

Wildfire risk now looms as a top-tier threat capable of bankrupting electric utilities overnight. This shift necessitates a fundamental overhaul of risk management strategies, from improved modeling to proactive mitigation.

What’s Changing, Fast

Liability Risk is Spreading

• The Lahaina Fire tragedy dramatically illustrated that catastrophic wildfire risk extends far beyond traditional high-risk regions. Hawaii Electric’s rapid market cap decline and subsequent large settlement underscore the potential for devastating financial repercussions, regardless of perceived culpability.
• Even in states where liability caps are being considered, they also come with substantial expectations that utilities do everything in their power to manage fire risk.
• The 2024 Smokehouse Creek Fire further solidified the reality that no region and no electric utility is immune from the consequence of asset-caused wildfire ignitions.

Investors, Creditors, and Insurance are Questioning Their Support and Demanding Change

• Electric utilities grapple with uncapped liability, a concern amplified by Warren Buffett’s public questioning of the industry’s investment viability in 2024. Investor confidence is directly tied to an electric utility’s ability to demonstrate robust wildfire risk management.
• Credit rating agencies are especially scrutinizing electric utility wildfire risk management practices and are actively downgrading utilities without such systems actively in place.
• Insurance availability and affordability have become critical challenges, with many electric utilities facing difficulty securing coverage, or resorting to self-insurance.

There are Regulatory and other Stakeholder Pressures

• States outside of California are increasingly implementing stringent regulatory compliance requirements, including mandated wildfire mitigation plans.
• Various stakeholders, including shareholders, local governments, regulators, community members, and insurers are all increasingly demanding that their electric utilities employ proactive wildfire mitigation measures for improved decision-making.

How Electric Utilities Can Respond to the Change and Improve

Electric utility risk managers are no longer facing a theoretical threat. The reality is that wildfire risk, once considered a localized issue, has become a pervasive and financially devastating hazard.

The core problem is the need to accurately understand and quantify a dynamic, complex, and previously underestimated risk.

This isn’t just about modeling fire behavior; it’s about translating that knowledge into actionable mitigation strategies and operational decision-making that address liability, regulatory compliance, investor confidence, and stakeholder trust.

The challenge lies in moving from reactive to proactive, from generalized risk assessments to granular, defensible strategies, and ultimately, ensuring long-term financial stability and operational resilience in the face of an increasingly volatile environment.

What’s Next: Embrace Proactive Risk Management

By leveraging sophisticated tools for real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and granular consequence modeling, electric utilities can move beyond reactive measures and static assessments.

Electric utilities can advance risk reduction with more data-driven decision-making across all facets of the organization.

For daily operations, this translates to optimized resource allocation, proactive mitigation efforts in high-risk zones, and more informed decisions regarding Public Safety Power Shutoffs.

For long-term asset planning, a clear understanding of wildfire consequence enables electric utilities to strategically prioritize infrastructure hardening and investments.

With news media across various western states highlighting strong wind events and their relationship with wildfire risk, it’s helpful to understand why these winds are an issue now, what downslope winds are, and how they impact wildfire behavior.

California’s Santa Ana

At this time of year, you often hear such winds called “Santa Ana winds”, but what does that mean? The name, “Santa Ana”, is a localized name to Southern California for a downslope wind event. As you move more north into Santa Barbara, they are called the “sundowner winds” because they tend to initiate at sunset. In northern California, they are called – ominously – the “Diablo winds”. While downslope windstorms are all similar in nature – each event is unique as they are tied to unique terrain features. All this does make it a bit tricky when you come to a new area to understand exactly what those local patterns are and what they are called. But they are a notorious enough wind to gain their own local names.

Regardless of local nomenclature, downslope winds are the more general feature of those types of named events and they can happen anywhere globally, given the right terrain conditions. The 2021 Marshall Fire in Colorado and the 2023 Lahaina Fire in Hawaii’ were two tragedies fueled by downslope windstorms.

Generally, with downslope wind events, you have very strong winds that can potentially be long-lasting and are usually associated with very dry air masses. Thus, you’ve got strong winds, dry air, and increasingly dry-cured – vegetation that is prime for ignition. These prolonged wind events can, potentially, have higher risk impacts because they have more drying potential on the vegetation, making them easier to ignite. Other critical fire weather patterns with equivalent winds, such as those associated with cold fronts or frontal passages will be more short-lived and are often associated with precipitation as well, reducing ignition potential and keeping them out of the headlines.

How Downslope Winds Work

It all comes down to how airflows and moves over or around a mountain. Depending on what that topographic feature is, you might have air flow splitting and just going around a mountain peak or ridgeline. When the wind starts to flow over the top of a mountain, that’s when you see downslope wind storms. Since the wind can’t go around, it is forced to go over the top, and under the right conditions (or wrong conditions), it collides with a stable air mass above, inhibiting the upward flow and over the terrain. Those stable layers essentially deflect all that upward energy back downward resulting in accelerated winds at the surface on the leeward side of the terrain. This creates a strong downward flow pulling air from aloft.

This is called the venturi effect and is analogous to covering most of the spout of a garden house with your thumb. The flow and pressure of the water increase with a much smaller spout. In a downslope windstorm, the stable layer aloft acts as the thumb, pinching the flow between that stable layer and the crest of the local terrain. This results in air shooting down the leeward side of the mountain.

Impacts to Wildfire Risk and Electric Utility Planning

The impacts of downslope winds on wildfire risk are dramatic because this increased wind can rapidly strengthen the spread and intensity of an otherwise small ignition. Electric utilities need the ability to identify, days in advance, areas of concern and predict wildfire spread and the impacts of potential fires from their assets and across their territory. This enables public and stakeholder communications, staging of field resources, and other logistical preparations for proactive de-energization and it can be done surgically by identifying which assets are most likely to fail and the consequence of any given failure.

Very similar planning tools identify where and when such conditions have previously occurred supporting prioritization of asset hardening that minimizes costs while safeguarding the grid and the public. See how leading electric utilities employ various tools like weather forecasts, ignition models, on-demand wildfire spread predictions, and impact analysis to forecast & monitor wildfire risks days in advance.

Catastrophic wildfires ignited by electrical equipment were often considered a “California issue”. Yet, extreme weather and a changing climate are causing electric utilities across the country to face the specter of wildfire for the first time. Now, they are being told by their regulators, investors, and insurers that they must develop a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) program. They’re being told to institute detailed plans to mitigate wildfire risk. All the while, they’re thinking, we don’t have wildfire risk!

Technosylva’s Vice President for Weather & Risk Solutions, Steve Vanderburg, shares this scenario from his years of experience working for electric utilities and in emergency operations centers facing those threats. He says that the more guesswork electric utilities can take out of their decision-making, the better off they will be.

5 Key Takeaways:

• Proactive Wildfire Risk Management is Essential: Even electric utilities in seemingly low-risk areas can be caught off guard by severe wildfire events.
• Meteorological Expertise is Crucial: Understanding fire weather conditions is vital for effective wildfire risk mitigation.
• Advanced Risk Modeling is Key: Relying solely on publicly available data may not provide enough granularity to accurately assess the wildfire risk to electric utilities.
• Contextualizing Risk is Important: Understanding the potential impacts of weather events is essential for informed decision-making.
• Investing in wildfire risk reduction is a long-term strategy: Proactive measures can help mitigate wildfire dangers and protect communities.

Read our full article in Utility Dive and see how leading electric utilities are employing various tools like weather forecasts, ignition models, on-demand wildfire spread predictions, and impact analysis, to forecast & monitor wildfire risks days in advance.

What is PSPS – Public Safety Power Shutoff?

With news media across various western states highlighting possible “PSPS events”, it’s helpful to understand how wildfire risk has increased as we enter the fall and what PSPS means for electric utilities as they look to keep communities safe. PSPS stands for Public Safety Power Shut Off. As wildfires become a growing threat due to extreme weather, electric utilities must take serious measures to prevent asset-caused ignitions. One of the ways they do this is with a PSPS program. But how does it work?

Proactively Turning Off the Power

During high-risk weather – think of strong winds or dry conditions – damaged or downed power lines or electrical equipment can spark a fire. By preemptively turning off the power before disaster strikes, utilities can maintain control and reduce the risk of sparks turning into wildfires. An electric utility may employ a PSPS program, which reflects a series of data-driven decisions that lead to possibly shutting off power to prevent a forced outage or an issue that could potentially lead to an ignition. By turning off the power ahead of time, they’re getting ahead of what they see as a potential outage risk. This affords control over how the power goes out and lowers the risk of ignition. If they don’t and Mother Nature takes control, there’s a chance a spark can impact communities.

Even though PSPS is a compelling tool, it’s not an option electric utilities make lightly. It is typically employed as a last resort, only coming into play after they’ve exhausted all alternatives. But when the risk of a wildfire is too high and other steps aren’t enough, PSPS becomes the best option to protect communities. It is becoming a standard safety measure across the industry, even if electric utilities don’t need or plan to use them often.

A Big Change for Power Companies

While PSPS might sound like a good solution, it’s not something electric utilities enjoy doing. A utility provider’s greatest goal is to provide reliable and uninterrupted power to its customers. Shutting the power off goes against everything they stand for. It’s not an easy decision, and there’s much to consider before making the call.

Imagine a software company in charge of providing data to customers suddenly having to decide to cut service for 48 hours to prevent harm. That’s similar to what electric utilities face with PSPS. It’s an adjustment for electric utilities because shutting off power goes against what is ingrained in any utility employee’s mind. However, when choosing between that or risking a wildfire, they have to do what’s necessary to keep people safe. Communities must also deal with periods of no power disrupting day-to-day life. This is why electric utilities need to adopt solutions that empower them to ensure PSPS events are rare, surgical when used, and span the shortest duration when activated.

Gaining the Advantage on Wildfire Decision-Making

In the end, PSPS is about balancing risk. While it’s not an easy decision for electric utilities, it can be a lifesaver in high-risk situations. As wildfires become more prevalent due to extreme weather, PSPS programs will become essential in protecting communities. Electric utilities can employ solutions to monitor and forecast emerging weather and wildfire risks in scenarios days in advance. Imagine being able to assess high ignition potential and possible consequence over a 5-day horizon, every day, to support the identification of candidate circuits for PSPS consideration. See how leading electric utilities employ various tools like weather forecasts, ignition models, on-demand wildfire spread predictions, and impact analysis to forecast & monitor wildfire risks days in advance.