Last month, electric utility Southern California Edison announced that in just over three and a half years its crews have installed insulated wire coverings on roughly one-third of its 10,000-mile network of power lines stretching through high fire-risk zones, an effort that’s expected to cost its ratepayers roughly $5 billion by the time the work is completed at the end of this decade.
In its July 12 announcement, SCE said it’s on track to achieve its year-end goal of replacing a total of 4,000 miles of bare power lines with covered insulation designed to sharply reduce the chances of those lines sparking wildfires.
“Covered conductor is a critical tool to quickly mitigate the threat of wildfires that could be caused by debris blowing into power lines,” SCE Chief Executive Steve Powell said in the announcement.
Southern California Edison is the utility subsidiary and by far the largest unit of Rosemead-based Edison International.
Installing wire insulation is the cornerstone of the utility’s wildfire mitigation plan, which also includes paring back vegetation near power lines, mounting cameras and other monitoring devices to more closely track weather and fire conditions, implementing power shutoffs during wind events or other “red flag” conditions and rerouting portions of its power line network underground.
The announcement said SCE plans to complete expedited grid-hardening work on more than 50 additional circuits this year, along with more sectionalizing devices and weather stations.
“On these 50 circuits, the company expects an incremental 60% reduction in Public Safety Power Shutoff outage time compared to the last two years, assuming the same weather and fuel conditions,” the announcement said.
SCE plans to have a total of 6,500 miles of power lines covered with insulating material by the end of 2024, with another 1,850 miles covered by the end of 2028.
Assuming those goals are met, roughly 85% of the 10,000 miles of power lines through high-risk fire areas will have insulation covering.
A portion of the remaining 1,500 miles of power lines is slated for undergrounding, a much more expensive option.
All this will be costing Southern California Edison ratepayers billions of dollars.
SCE spokesman Reggie Kumar told the Business Journal that between 2019 and 2023 the utility anticipates spending $2.5 to $3 billion to install up to 5,300 miles of covered conductor in high fire-risk areas.
The company has requested an additional $800 million in funding to install another 1,200 miles of covered conductor in 2024, he added.
All of the fund expenditures must be approved by the California Public Utilities Commission as part of SCE’s general rate case proceedings before that body. Those proceedings determine the rates that utility customers will pay for their electricity.
