Reducing wildfire risk from power lines costly, but efforts underway

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — As wildfire season approaches, communities across the country are looking for ways to prevent fires from ever starting.

Causes like lightning are outside of our control, but electricity is still flowing through wildfire country in the form of thousands of miles of power lines.

In fact, utility power lines are either a suspected or determined cause in several high-profile deadly wildfires in the last ten years.

Officials said power lines were the cause of the devastating Camp Fire that tore through Paradise, California in 2018.

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Power lines are also suspected of starting some of the deadly wildfires that went through Oregon in 2020.

“We don’t want to be the cause of the fire and we also want to do anything that we can to reduce overall wildfire risk,” said Jona Whitesides, a spokesperson for Rocky Mountain Power.

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Rocky Mountain Power serves customers in parts of Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. It’s also the sister company to Pacific Power, which serves parts of California, Oregon, and Washington.

“This is one of our 400-plus weather stations,” Whitesides said as he pointed to a new set of instruments next to a power line on the foothills of Salt Lake City.

Such weather stations provide better data about what’s happening right next to utility infrastructure. Rocky Mountain Power has also hired a team to interpret that data.

“We brought in an in-house meteorology team about two years ago,” Whitesides said. “Over about the last year to eighteen months, they did a re-analysis of 30 years of weather data.”

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Whitesides said the combination of a meteorology team and individualized weather stations gives them a better idea of how to mitigate risk in specific areas.

“We have been doing a lot of mitigation work to sectionalize the lines,” he said.

When windy weather moves in to wildfire country, there’s always the chance of debris like tree branches being blown into lines and causing a spark.

“When we sectionalize the lines, we’re able to, rather than turn off the power to maybe an entire community, we can sectionalize it to those areas that are most at risk,” Whitesides said.

Rocky Mountain Power has also undertaken other projects like placing power lines underground.

“They’ve already buried all of our mainline power up the canyon from the bottom to the top,” said Dan Knopp, mayor of Brighton, Utah, which lies in Big Cottonwood Canyon.

MORE: Data shows steady decrease in Utah's human-caused wildfires

Rocky Mountain Power started that project in 2022.

“You’re eliminating the potential for a spark to start a fire,” Whitesides said, explaining the benefits of undergrounding.

Initially, Knopp said the plan was only to bury the biggest lines.

“We begged and pleaded and convinced them to go ahead and do all the secondary lines,” Knopp said.

That work is still to come, but Knopp said it’s possible that all power lines in Big Cottonwood Canyon could eventually be underground.

It’s a type of mitigation that many people think should be done in many more places, but it’s an extremely expensive process according to Whitesides.

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“We’re going to do it where it makes the most sense and where it’s most cost-effective,” he said.

Much of the cost of undergrounding is eventually passed on to ratepayers. Whitesides said the cost of burying power lines can easily quadruple the cost of a traditional line with power poles.

“It’s really expensive,” he said. “But we’re committed to doing it in the places that have the highest risk.”

Rocky Mountain Power isn’t the only utility trying to reduce wildfire risk. California’s Pacific Gas & Electric, which was deemed responsible for the Camp Fire, has embarked on a massive system-hardening effort. They’ve promised to underground 10,000 miles of power lines.

Brighton resident Barbara Cameron believed some of the deadly wildfires over the years, which utility companies have been liable for, were a catalyst for change.

“We asked in years past for participation,” Cameron said. “We knew it was an expensive process. When they came to us two years ago, I was so surprised and delighted.”

Federal officials are also part of the process.

“We have $20 billion that we are putting out to utilities,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm on a recent trip to Salt Lake City. “To those who operate transmission lines to reduce wildfires. How are we doing that? Well, they have to maybe underground, they have to cover their conductors, they have to sectionalize.”

That money is part of a recent utility investment grant announced by the Biden Administration, but it’s clear utilities are also making their own investments.

“We’ve seen this happening,” Whitesides said. “We’ve seen it happen with other utilities. Let’s get ahead of it and let’s put mitigation practices to work.”

“I think they get it,” said Knopp. “I think they understand. They’ve seen it. It’s happened. There’s no question.”

You can learn more about Rocky Mountain Power’s wildfire mitigation efforts by visiting their website.

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