Since wildfires in 2007 ravaged parts of San Diego County, San Diego Gas & Electric has made a concerted effort to reduce the risk of another wave of deadly fires — and the utility has spent about $6 billion in ratepayer funds in the process.
A chunk of that money went to establishing a state-of-the art meteorology network and SDG&E recently opened a Weather and Climate Resilience Center at its headquarters in Kearny Mesa.
The more than 16,000 square-foot facility houses both SDG&E’s weather forecasting and Emergency Operations Center under a single roof. Designed as a hub to monitor and mitigate the effects of extreme weather events, the site also acts a meeting place for officials from other power companies to visit and compare notes — and for community groups and schools to tour.
SDG&E’s Vice President of Wildfire and Climate Science, Brian D’Agostino with a display showing a wildfire simulation in the background while in the Emergency Operations Center at SDG&E in San Diego on Tuesday. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
“We’ve taken everything that comes into our resilience as an organization — the ability to see any event coming, the ability to prepare and train the organization, the ability to react and guide our recovery,” said Brian D’Agostino, meteorologist and SDG&E’s vice president of wildfire and climate science. “Everybody who does that was brought together under me in this space.”
High winds and dry conditions in the fall of 2007 led to the Witch Creek, Guejito and Rice wildfires that destroyed more than 1,300 homes, killed two people, injured 40 firefighters and forced more than 10,000 to seek shelter at Qualcomm Stadium. One of the fires was caused by a tree limb that fell onto an SDG&E power line.
Since then, SDG&E created its weather network that includes 222 stations that measure wind speed, temperatures and humidity every 10 minutes. D’Agostino heads a team of six meteorologists that monitor more than 130 cameras that stream views of high-fire risk areas.
A tour of the Weather and Climate Resilience Center showed off the high-tech aspects of the utility’s strategy to reduce wildfire risks, including using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
SDG&E’s Vice President of Wildfire and Climate Science, Brian D’Agostino speaks while next to a display showing a San Diego County wildfire history timeline while in the Emergency Operations Center at SDG&E in San Diego on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
SDG&E’s Vice President of Wildfire and Climate Science, Brian D’Agostino shows a San Diego County wildfire history timeline while in the Emergency Operations Center at SDG&E in San Diego on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Operations meteorologist, Justin Buchinsky shows the Alert California wild land camera network map while in the Emergency Operations Center at SDG&E in San Diego on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Some of the situation awareness dashboard displayed in the Emergency Operations Center at SDG&E in San Diego on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Vice President of Wildfire and Climate Science, Brian D’Agostino, left, and Meteorology Program Manager, Chris Arends in the Emergency Operations Center at SDG&E in San Diego on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
1 of 5SDG&E’s Vice President of Wildfire and Climate Science, Brian D’Agostino speaks while next to a display showing a San Diego County wildfire history timeline while in the Emergency Operations Center at SDG&E in San Diego on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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D’Agostino conducted a wildfire simulation Tuesday in front of a giant computer screen showing the footprint of a potential wildfire starting around Alpine.
“We can open this impact analysis table,” he said, touching a tab on the monitor, “and we start to say, OK, where are the people, where are the structures and buildings that are within that footprint? Then you start doing a lot of the analysis” on what strategies that SDG&E and emergency crews can take.
All that data-crunching was used last week when Santa Ana winds blew through the region. Combined with low humidity levels of around 10%, gusts of about 50 mph in some backcountry communities prompted D’Agostino to implement what’s called Public Safety Power Shutoffs that resulted in 1,263 SDG&E customers having their electricity preemptively cut off.
“It’s not an easy decision to make,” D’Agostino said.
Also known as PSPS, the practice is used by investor-owned utilities in California to de-energize circuits in targeted areas when high winds and dry conditions elevate the risk of power lines falling and potentially igniting a wildfire.
“We can do over 200 machine learning-point forecasts throughout the county to understand the severity of an incoming threat, namely Santa Anas,” said Chris Arends, meteorology program manager at SDG&E. “It stops raining (in the San Diego area) in April. We dry out all year long and then the Santa Anas show up like a blow-dryer on the landscape.”
Meteorology Program Manager, Chris Arends shows a long range wind forecast map for next week in Southern California while in the Emergency Operations Center at SDG&E in San Diego on Tuesday. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Red flag warnings issued by the National Weather Service were in effect for three days last week but power outages were confined to two days, with SDG&E officials saying the advanced technology helped them coordinate with work crews to get power restored at a faster rate.
Last week marked the first time in three years that SDG&E has had to initiate PSPS but it looks like another round of Santa Ana winds may blow through next week.
“It’s too early to tell,” D’Agostino said. “But such a big part of our center is analyzing that risk, working with fire agencies and working with the National Weather Service. Our meteorology team is already coordinating across the region on next week’s event.”
To help reduce potential wildfires, SDG&E has placed about 45% of its infrastructure underground. But doing so is expensive, and soaring utility bills have generated an increasing number of complaints from SDG&E customers.
According to the most recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, San Diego had the highest price for electricity in the country in October, averaging 41.9 cents per kilowatt-hour.
SDG&E placed about 70 miles of power lines underground last year and wants to do a lot more in the next seven years.
But the California Public Utilities Commission appears to be balking.
In a proposed decision regarding what rates SDG&E can charge its 3.7 million customers from 2024 through 2027, the regulator is looking at a less expensive option — having SDG&E underground just 35 miles of power lines per year, while wrapping above-ground lines with covered conductor at a rate of 100 miles per year.
SDG&E argues that placing the lines underground is more cost-effective for customers in the long run because it’s safer and has lobbied the commission to change the proposed decision. A vote is scheduled for next month.
But even looking from a big picture perspective, $6 billion of ratepayer dollars spent since 2007 is a lot of money.
Bill Powers, a frequent SDG&E critic, said, “I don’t have much of a comment” about the Weather and Climate Resilience Center but focused his critique on SDG&E’s wildfire spending priorities.
A board member of The Protect Our Communities Foundation, a local environmental and consumer group, Powers said, for example, the utility should spend money to equip the roughly 31,000 residents living in extreme high fire threat areas (also known as Tier 3) with solar panels plus battery storage.
“Beef up those batteries and make sure (customers in the backcountry) have enough battery support so that they can last 24 or 48 hours on batteries” during a Public Safety Power Shutoff, said Powers.
Instead, “the whole direction of the program has been to maximize shareholder benefits and maximize new investment and steel in the ground infrastructure,” Powers said.
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SDG&E’s wildfire prevention efforts have not completely eliminated fires since 2007. The Lilac Fire in December 2017 that ignited near Bonsall destroyed 157 structures. But the San Diego area has experienced no catastrophic fires in the past 17 years.
That’s quite different than other parts of the state, such as the 2017 Thomas Fire in Southern California Edison’s service territory that destroyed 1,063 structures and killed one resident and one firefighter.
Pacific Gas & Electric has been faulted for multiple fires in recent years, including the Zogg Fire in 2020 that killed four, the Dixie Fire in 2021 that cost $637.4 million to suppress and the devastating Camp Fire in 2018 that killed 85.
SDG&E’s spending since 2007 “is about doing everything in our power to avoid power lines from causing wildfires,” D’Agostino said.
More than 130 utilities have visited the Weather and Climate Resilience Center since it opened in April. The roster included power companies outside the U.S., including one from Chile.
A series of wildfires in Chile, fueled by 15 years of drought, killed more than 130 people in February of this year.
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