PG&E Plans to Bury Power Lines to Reduce California Wildfires
PG&E, the largest electric utility in California, plans to spend at least $15 billion to bury power lines within the state, in a move designed to reduce the odds of the company’s equipment igniting fires. The utility has been under fire (pun intended) for several years, and despite the huge price tag, undergrounding seems like the best needle-moving option going forward.
When and How will PG&E Execute Its Plan to Bury Power Lines?
Overall, the company is planning to bury a whopping 10,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines in order to prevent its fraying grid from sparking wildfires. All told, this represents approximately 10% of the company’s total wire infrastructure, and the $15 billion cost estimate could balloon to $30 billion, depending on the efficacy of the execution of the plan, the cost of which will likely be funded by ratepayers.
Obviously, the wildfire issue in California and other parts of the western U.S. is extremely severe, and PG&E has been blamed for starting several of them over the past few years. The company’s plan to bury power lines is akin to a last resort, and has been triggered by the July 2021 Dixie Fire, an event directly caused by PG&E’s equipment.
PG&E has been reluctant to take this approach in the past due to the exorbitant cost. But given the current state of affairs in California, exasperated by climate change and the megadroughts permeating the western U.S., PG&E has finally come to the realization that it has little choice but to take extreme measures.
While the price tag is relatively well defined, the timetable to execute the plan is less clear. The company has publicly stated that the undergrounding work could take several years to complete, but current efforts have only managed to bury about 70 miles of lines per year. Therefore, a decade or more seems like a more accurate time estimate.
The bottom line is that we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out. The plan to bury power lines is one of several initiatives the company is taking to try and solve what looks like an unsolvable problem. I, for one, will be watching this very closely in the years to come.
