(gentle music)
Operator: Welcome
to the California Public Utilities Commission,
Joint IOU PSS workshop.
President Batjer, you may begin.
-: Thank you operator and I want
to welcome everyone this morning.
Good morning.
I'd like to thank the leaders of our sister agency,
CAL FIRE and Cal OES as well as my fellow Commissioners
for joining us today
for this really important public meeting.
Before we begin, I would like to cover information
on the public population in today's meeting.
The meeting is live streamed on the CPUC website.
You can view the meeting@www.adminmonitor.com/ca/cpuc
admin monitor is all one word.
Participants can hear the live events and make comments
during the public comment portion of the meeting
by dialing into 8008571917
and enter pass code 5180519#.
Participants listening in by phone will be placed
on a mute in listen only mode
until the public comment portion of this meeting begins.
Once the public comment portion of the meeting begins,
participants may dial *1 when they wish to speak
to be placed in a queue by the operator.
If you encounter difficulty calling
into the public telephone line,
please contact the CPUC's public advisor
at public.advisor@cpuc.ca.gov
or call our toll free number 8668498390.
The public may also make written comments
that will be reviewed following today's meeting
by the following link in today's agenda,
which will take them to the docket for PSPS proceeding
and clicking on the add public comment button,
you can begin your comment.
With that, turning to today's very important subject.
When it comes to the decision to shut off power
to customers,
utilities must execute Public Safety Power Shutoff,
PSPS events in a manner that places the well-being
of the people and the communities they serve first.
We are holding today's meeting as part
of our ongoing actions to reduce the impact
of investor-owned utilities PSPS events.
Today, during the first half of the day we will hear
from PacifiCorp, San Diego Gas and Electric Company
and Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
But their PSPS performance during
to hear from them about their PSPS performance
in the 2020 wildfire season
and their lessons learned in advance of the 2021 season.
During the second half of the day,
we will have the opportunity to hear from the people
and communities who are impacted by the utilities' decision
to shut off the power.
We will have have a round table with the representatives
from the access and functional needs community on engagement
from the utilities before and during the events
and how this can be improved.
Following that we will have a round table
with representatives of the local governments and tribes
from across the state who have been impacted by PSPS events
to understand what was working better this past season
and where there remains room for improvement.
Both in the morning session
and the afternoon session we will have opportunities to hear
from the public.
To me, the afternoon panels are the most important
and critical for our objectives of reducing the impacts
of PSPS events.
We, as the regulator need to listen
and learn about the real impacts
and more importantly utilities need to listen and learn.
That is why I have asked top leadership from the utilities
to attend today and to stay and listen intently
to the afternoon panel.
It is critical they hear and internalize the impacts
to people and communities they have the privilege to serve
so they can translate what they learn today
into real actions at their organizations.
We are at a point in the year where there's still time,
little time, still time to incorporate lessons learned
from last year into planning and execution
for this year's fire season.
This afternoon's panel are a valuable opportunity
for utility leadership to take the field feedback
and translate it into real changes.
In terms of the order of this morning session,
we will hear first from PacifiCorp then SDG&E
and finally PG&E, followed by public comments.
We heard earlier this winter from Edison,
so they will not be attending today as speakers,
I'm hoping that they are indeed listening intently.
In the afternoon, we will first hear from access
and functional needs community
and then impacted local governments and tribes
followed again by public comments.
With that, I'd like to turn to my colleagues on the dais.
Chief Porter from CAL FIRE first
and then we'll turn to Chief Deputy Director Curry
from Cal OES.
Chief Porter.
Porter: Thank you President Batjer
and thank you all for this important hearing.
It is something that is important to us looking at
what potentially could be with the drought conditions
that we seem to be going in another challenging year.
Of course, some of the weather is not this far out able
to be predicted is wind, which is the primary driver
for PSPS and so we'll see what the summer brings,
but I look forward to hearing how everybody's doing
in their preparations and getting ready
for this coming season.
Thank you.
-: Thank you Chief Porter.
Chief Deputy Director Curry from Cal OES.
Good morning.
-: Hi, good morning President Batjer, Commissioners,
Chief Porter and IOU partners.
My name again is Tina Curry, chief deputy at Cal OES
and I too appreciate the opportunity
to have this discussion today and invitation to join
to talk about the 2020 PSPS power or I'm sorry,
Public Safety Power Shutoff events or PSPS.
This was the new thing for us in California,
of course, a couple of years ago and it's imperative
for Cal OES as the overarching coordinator
of all things disasters and emergencies for the state
to work closely with the CPUC and CAL FIRE
as well as our IOU partners to prepare for PSPS and ensure
that our communities receive reliable
and timely notifications prior to events.
And I do wanna note that overall there's,
we saw a lot of improvements from 2019 to 2020
and just to really appreciate the partnership
and the engagement to look critically
at where things went well
but also where things can be improved
and certainly that's what we're here to do today,
is talk about that small window like you said president
with which we have to prepare to make sure
that not only are we sustaining the things
that are going well or what we've reached a consistency
and kind of a regularity in terms of our protocols
but also where we still have areas where we can improve.
Really it's our,
we're counting on this continued positive engagement
that we've seen thus far to plan for and prepare
and to continuously improve on the PSPS
but more importantly, our communities are counting on us
to make sure California and many others have contended
with a lot in 2020, historic fire season that followed
and certainly some PSPS events were included in that.
But again, look forward to the discussion today
and thoughtful input on how we can do even better
and be better prepared.
So thank you so much for the opportunity to participate.
-: Thank you very much Chief Deputy Curry.
And now I will turn to my fellow Commissioners.
Commissioner Guzman Aceves,
would you like to make any remarks today?
-: Thank you President Batjer.
I just maybe will give a highlight of a particular focus
that I would like the speakers to touch upon,
particularly the IOUs
in hearing from their greater preparation and coordination
with the telecommunications sector
and the water providers in their areas.
I think given this time where they could be prepared
and coordinating some of the critical facilities
that each of them depend upon for continuation of service
and what kind of planning has been done to really ensure
that those services stay unaffected during these shutoffs.
Thank you very much.
-: Thank you Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
Commissioner Shiroma, would you like to make some remarks?
-: Yes, thank you President Batjer
and to you (indistinct)
the wildfire safety and enforcement staff
for today's workshop
for your work on the wildfire proceedings.
Also many thanks to CAL FIRE and Cal OES
for this sister agency partnership.
I look forward to hearing the presentations today
from the investor-owned utilities
about what they are doing, what has worked for them,
what lessons learned to share.
Also looking forward to hearing about their engagement
with the access and functional needs community
and to hear more about the outreach and survey efforts
in this afternoon session.
As you outlined President Batjer, it's very important
that the investor-owned utilities
not only internally reflect but also pay attention
to the work of the other IOUs and to learn from each other.
So I'll look forward to the presentation today
and learning myself.
Thank you.
-: Thank you Commissioner Shiroma.
Commissioner Houck, would you like
to make some opening remarks?
-: Thank you President Batjer.
I'd like to thank you, the safety policy division,
the safety and enforcement division
and wildfire safety division
along with our executive director, Rachel Peterson,
for your leadership on the wildfire and PSPS matters
for the CPUS, I'm concerned about the impacts of PSPS
on ratepayers
in particular our most vulnerable ratepayers,
as well as the possibility of wildfire
in the absence of PSPS.
These events cannot occur without attention to consequences
and I understand that the balance is difficult to strike and
that PSPS events seem to be increasing
as climate change is worsening.
So with those comments in mind, I look forward to listening
and learning from today's presentation
and thank you to everyone participating in today's workshop.
Again, I'm looking forward especially to the round tables.
-: Thank you Commissioner Houck.
Has Commissioner Rechtschaffen joined us?
-: Yes, I have President Batjer.
-: Great, would you like to make any comments?
-: Thank you.
I want to acknowledge as President Batjer outlined
that there has been work done to reduce the size
and the scope of PSPS as in there have been improvements.
Nonetheless, it's critical that we continue to improve
and have the utilities continue
to fine tune their processes, make improvements.
President Batjer has been adopting the guidelines each year
to make sure that we learn from prior years
and we look forward to continuing
to make these events happen,
not just as infrequently as possible
but as smoothly as possible.
And as President Batjer indicated,
I also am very much looking forward
to this afternoon session where we can hear
from stakeholders.
I wanna thank and acknowledge all the incredible engagement
so far that we've had from local governments,
tribal governments, community-based organizations,
advocates and individual customers.
Your engagement has been our most important means
of understanding the impacts of PSPSs so we can continue
to respond with new guidelines and I look forward
to this afternoon's discussion
as well as the morning discussion,
but in particularly hearing from our stakeholders
in the public.
-: Thank you very much Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
Okay, we will now turn to our presentations.
First this morning, we will hear from PacifiCorp
and we will be hearing from the president and CEO,
Stefan Bird.
We will have about 20 minutes total for the presentation
and discussion with members of the dais.
My fellow dais members, please feel free to ask questions
as they come up.
Sorry that we will be interrupting the presentation
but we have found that
that's probably the best interactive way to stay on top
of our questions in a timely manner.
I will again remind people, we're gonna be on a clock.
So please remember that as you're asking your questions
and PacifiCorp as you're answering and responding.
Thank you very much, President and CEO Bird.
-: Thank you very much.
Good morning and thank you President Batjer
for the opportunity to be here today.
Again for the record I'm Stefan Bird,
president and CEO of Pacific Power.
I'd also like to extend my appreciation
to Commissioner Guzman Aceves, Commissioner Rechtschaffen,
Commissioner Shiroma and Commissioner Houck
as well as the CAL FIRE Chief Porter
and Chief Deputy Director Curry who joined us today,
as well as Daniel Berlin for co-hosting today's meeting.
We're honored to be here with our industry colleagues
and partners today from San Diego Gas and Electric
and Pacific Gas and Electric to share best practices
and lessons learned
from last year's Public Safety Power Shutoff events
and to listen to feedback from regulators and the public.
Pacific Power is an organization that's committed
to continuous improvement and we share
in the Commission's desire to reduce the impacts
of Public Safety Power Shutoffs.
One way that we're achieving that aim is
through our direct partnership in community.
Through our community resiliency program we started in 2019,
we're working with local emergency managers
to identify key projects to uphold critical infrastructure
during any time there's a service interruption
and that includes things from energy stores,
technical assessments to portable backup generation grants.
Includes a portfolio of resources for communities seeking
to enhance their emergency management
and disaster preparedness capabilities.
It's partnerships and programs like this
that are a key aspect of a resilient community.
We certainly understand it's no small matter
to consider turning the power off for an entire community
to ensure they have the support they need
if such an event were to occur.
I'm gonna now turn over to my colleague, David Lucas,
who serves as the vice-president of wildfire safety
for Pacific Power
and he will give you a more comprehensive summary
of our 2020 PSPS actions and post event analysis.
Thank you.
-: Yes, thank you Stefan.
Good morning, President Batjer, members of the Commission,
representatives from CAL FIRE and Cal OES.
As mentioned, my name is David Lucas.
I'm the Vice President of Wildfire Safety.
Recognizing we only have 20 minutes for the presentation
and the Q&A session today, I'll attempt to be thorough
but yet quickly move through our slides to allow for time
for questions at the end of the presentation.
So next slide please.
So real quickly,
just to highlight the PacifiCorp's service territory
in Northern California.
The territory extends across
approximately 11,000 square miles where we serve
roughly 45,000 customers with 63 substations,
2,520 miles of distribution line and 800 miles
of transmission line.
Of that, approximately 1200 miles or approximately 36%
of the overhead lines are located
within the high fire threat district that correlates
to roughly 850 miles of overhead distribution line
and 350 miles of transmission line.
Next slide please.
So current PSPS plans at PacifiCorp are limited
to the tier three areas.
And as you can see on graphic on the left side of this slide
it is further broken down into five specific PSPS zones.
The reason we break it down into further five zones
or further into five zones is to minimize customer impact.
And if you look at the table on the right side
of this slide, you can see
that we have approximately 10,000 customers
within the identified PSPS areas with the majority
of those customers located in the Mount Shasta area
but also a significant portion, over 2000 customers located
in the Weed area.
And that's important for today's discussion
as we look back at the results
in 2020, which I will touch on with the next slide please.
So similar to all of our colleagues in the utility industry,
we attempt to use the PSPS as a measure of last resort.
We have protocols in place too that are designed
to minimize the frequency and impact on our customers
from PSPS events.
We notify our customers based on forecast though
yet we make decisions to de-energize based
on actual real-time conditions.
We've also created circuit segmentation plans for all
of our tier three circuits and prior to making any decision
to execute a PSPS, we review current system conditions,
vegetation work plans and we engage
with our critical customers.
We understand local suppression that may be available,
understand any conditions that may be present
in the communities that we serve
from an emergency responder perspective
that would potentially influence our decision.
So if we look back at 2020,
we effectively had three public facing events.
Two of which were, I guess,
for lack of a better description were false positives
with one event on September 13,
actually ending up in a de-energization event.
The de-energization event on September 13th affected
approximately 3000 customers with a total duration
of just under eight hours.
And this event affected two distribution circuits
that I'll provide a little more detail on the next slide.
So the two circuits impacted in 2020
by the PSPS were circuit 5G83 and circuit 5G45
and as you can see on the left side of the slide,
circuit 5G83 impacted 1,976 customers with just under 17,000
or 1700 of those customers being residential,
approximately 263 being commercial/industrial,
three, medically sensitive and 17 in other classifications.
Circuit 5G45, there was a total customer impact
of 581 with 444
of those customers being the residential classification.
-: President Batjer, could I ask him.
-: Next slide please.
Yes -: Yes please, go on.
Go ahead, please.
-: Okay, I'm reminded of the question
that you asked Southern California Edison and I'll ask
it here and that is, just briefly step through
the actual protocols that you go through to decide
that a PSPS must be invoked.
-: Okay, I think I may actually cover off on that a bit
in one of the other slides.
Or actually, let me see here.
Maybe we back up to the previous slide that had the.
-: Just to get that more granular insight,
here's what happens.
-: Yeah, one more please.
So one more please.
Right there, okay.
So with respect to actually enacting a PSPS event,
similar to our colleagues in the industry,
we have developed certain indices based on
nationally recognized fire indexes.
And we look at those along with the weather forecast
and determine based on that forecast
and that's the challenge for all utilities
in that it is actually a forecast, a weather forecast,
but we evaluate those indices.
We also review our internal system status,
our vegetation work plans.
We engage with local emergency responders.
We evaluate historiCAL FIRE history.
We look at any current emergencies or situations
in the communities in which we are contemplating a PSPS
to ensure that we don't make the situation worse
by de-energizing the power during that timeframe.
So all of those factors are evaluated
and then we have additional internal discussions
and then as the time nears, contingent upon feedback we get
from local field resources that we deploy
as well as continuous feedback we receive
from the local emergency response community,
that's what leads us to ultimately make the decision as to
whether or not a de-energization will occur.
The challenge here for us and for everyone
in the industry is that our initial planning
and decision-making is based on a weather forecast
as touched on early on by President Batjer.
Is that helpful and answer your question, Commissioner?
-: Yes, thank you.
Thank you.
-: So maybe now.
So lessons learned and this is appropriate timing
with respect to this hearing today.
The biggest lessons that we took away
from those three public facing events
in 2020 is really about communication and it's communication
that we have with local emergency services,
community stakeholders
as well as the actual end use customers.
And from those lessons, we do have plans
to continue, improve upon our notification
and documentation of events to increase
that communication amongst the various departments
within the company and with our external stakeholders.
Access to GIS data
through shape files will be made available
during notification to public safety partners
and we plan to improve upon the company website
to include weather forecast data,
to improve transparency on a potential PSPS event.
And then my next several slides I'll provide more detail
on a couple of other areas around continuous improvement,
both on emergency management front
as well as our weather forecasting capability.
So next slide please.
So if I can draw your attention to this slide,
I mean, really it has been a journey starting in 2019.
We are committed at Pacific Power
to deploy a continuous improvement model,
both as it relates to our ability to communicate
with the affected stakeholders as well as our ability
to more accurately and precisely predict the situations
in which a PSPS event may be required.
And so on that front, if I can get you to look at the 2021,
we are making material advancements
in our weather prediction capability.
We recently brought on board a chief meteorologist in 2021
with extensive utility experience
in predictive weather capability and PSPS forecasting.
We also will be adding additional meteorologists
to the staff and we will have an operation prior
to the 2021 wildfire season, a wildfire or the WRF model
for better prediction capabilities.
And then going forward in 2022,
recognizing that this is a continuous improvement journey,
we will have in service,
a high-performance computing cluster so that we will be able
to leverage machine learning and impacts based forecasting.
And then we'll be on
that same continuous improvement journey
and refinement about potential fire indices
and improve weather forecasting by expanding the Mesonet
that we will be utilizing to predict the most
and more extreme events that may result in a PSPS event.
I mean, at the end of the day, our goal is to minimize
to the greatest extent possible the disruption that results
from false positives while continuing to take steps
to protect public safety utilizing this tool of last resort.
Next slide please.
So going back to stakeholder engagement
and further improvements, we also brought
into the organization a new director
of emergency management,
brought in just this month, actually.
This individual is gonna be responsible
for PacifiCorp's overall strategy to improve training,
communication and response to PSPS event coordination.
We also plan to further expand our emergency management team
in 2021 to provide additional community outreach
and 24/7 monitoring capability.
And then lastly, we plan to identify communities
beyond the tier two and tier three areas,
to identify locations
to hold additional wildfire preparedness workshops.
Next slide, please.
-: I have a quick question, Marybel .
Sorry to interrupt you.
As you're adding to your team, have you considered,
has the company considered hiring also a individual
or an individual who has the whole, the sole responsibility,
excuse me, of working with the AFN communities
and medically, the Medical Baseline community,
the critical care facilities.
I know this is a great concern of the communities
that all too often in the IOUs we've seen
that there is a person who has perhaps that responsibility
but that person wears many hats.
So it's not a devoted person or FTE's specifically.
Have you given any consideration to that?
-: Not specifically President Batjer.
However, as I mentioned when we,
as we bring this new individual on and we continue
to assess our internal capabilities,
I mean, we do have, as you mentioned,
certain full-time employees within the organization
that typically are dedicated to our AFN type customers
and to my knowledge, they did do a fairly decent job
at least based on the feedback we got last year in engaging
with that community.
But certainly as we look
to improve upon our plans going forward, that's something
that we would certainly take under consideration.
-: I would appreciate that.
One final question from me.
And that is you talked about,
described your fragmentation of your circuitry
and some of your efforts to harden the circuits.
What kind of backup power do you currently use
at your substations.
-: That would primarily be battery DC power at substations.
-: Battery DC power, okay.
-: Correct. -: Okay, thank you.
Please continue.
-: Okay, next slide please.
So, and this touches a bit on that topic, President Batjer
with respect to limiting or reducing the customer impact.
Pacific power
does currently have a community resiliency program
that includes a portfolio of resources
and currently it's really two specific areas,
technical assessments
to help the communities evaluate potential costs
and benefits of adding energy storage
or associated technologies to critical facilities.
Applications are currently being accepted for that portion
of the program and then assessments are going
to be initiated on a first come first serve basis.
The second program to help minimize that impact
on the community that we were discussing is really
around grants that are available for the purchase
of portable renewable backup generators and installation
of energy storage at critical facilities.
Currently the grant requests are going to be accepted
through July through November of this year.
We have approximately $400,000 of available funding in 2021
and we will continue to work with local emergency management
through our service territory to identify potential projects
But one of the forms that we utilize for
that process is the wildfire safety advisory board,
which we have folks from our organization
as well as all the other external stakeholders involved
during those discussions to help identify specific locations
that these types of programs may help address
or minimize some of those impacts.
-: Can we drill down just a minute there on two things?
What is the per unit cost of the batteries
like the one that's shown there
and how much of the grant will cover that cost?
And is that your only backup battery that you're offering
to your customers?
-: That is one.
So, I mean, just quite frankly,
I mean, we're still at the early stages of this aspect
of our wildfire mitigation plan.
The grants will cover some
of those battery type backup power that are shown
on this slide.
I do not, I'll have to get back to you.
I do not have the specific cost
on a dollar per kilowatt basis for example
of what those cost.
Mostly targeting though, towards the low income
or the care customers within the PDZs
-: Just concerned about, $400,000 is a bucket of money
but you have 5,000 folks in part of your territory
that were turned off.
You have 2000, I don't recall
on this slide, the Medical Baseline but it seems to me
just intuitively that $400,000 isn't gonna go very far.
So I was just wondering what the per unit cost is.
The other thing I'm a little concerned about is
how long does it take to get one of these backup batteries
to a customer because applying in July through November,
that's the height of fire season.
So they would be applying at the same time,
they might be getting shut off.
So how long will the distribution,
the supply chain and the distribution take?
-: Correct, we'll have to get back to you
on those specific questions around the supply chain.
Recognizing that this is a 2021 pilot.
I would however like to direct,
if we look at the table on the top right
of this particular slide, as I mentioned on some
of the other material, we have roughly 10,000 customers
in the PDZ zones that may potentially be affected
and then you can see a breakout of the total number
of customers based on low-income life support,
medical or AFN.
So, although I certainly understand the concern you express
around the overall total funding level, I think our scope
and scale with the customers
that may need this assistance most, may be smaller
for Pacific Power than some of the other utilities.
But certainly great questions that we'll need
to get back to you on.
-: And thank you for bringing my attention to the chart.
It's pretty small.
So I'm squinting my eyes to see it but thank you for that.
-: I apologize for that.
-: I would like to know your timeframe for distribution
of backup batteries and how long that logistics,
if you will, will take between PacifiCorp
and their customers because you operate
in a very high fire danger area as we all know well.
So thank you.
-: And President Batjer,
David, if I could pile on this.
This is Commissioner Rechtschaffen,
the questions you're responding to,
just in addition to that, when you do respond,
if you could tell us that the type of backup devices
that you have in mind are these ones
that provide backup power for an appliance for a few hours
or they're storage systems that provide backup
for an entire home
or what kinds of backup batteries are we talking about?
-: So if I understand the question, we'll get back to you
on the actual capacity of the emergency devices
that we're talking about.
-: Right, because there's a variety.
Some are designed just to provide backup power for two
or three hours at enough capacity
to keep an appliance running like an oxygen tank
or a CPAP or something
and others provide much greater capacity for home
or major appliances in a home for several hours.
So that would be interesting
that we would wanna know that as well.
-: Correct, okay.
Any other questions or I think I only have one slide left.
So if there are no other questions,
I guess we can move to this.
-: Yes, you can continue.
-: Okay, excellent, thank you.
So I won't read through all of the bullets on this slide
but really what it's intended to convey is
that Pacific Power plans to continue its focus
on its wildfire mitigation plan,
specifically the plan that was approved by the Commission
in 2020 with the overall effort and goals
to minimize both scope and scale of potential PSPS events
and that can only occur through continued focus
on customer preparedness, situational awareness,
asset inspections and grid hardening.
Again, won't read through each of the bullets
but you can see that we are focusing on in 2021
and the future, replacement of bare conductor
with covered conductor,
replacement or reinforcement of wood poles,
installation of additional system automation equipment
and replacement of small diameter conductor beginning
in 2022.
And so that concludes my presentation
and we'll turn it back to the Commission
for any further questions.
-: I think there is a question that hasn't been answered yet,
David, that Commissioner Guzman Aceves started with
and I won't repeat it for her,
has to do with your communications with the telco companies
as well as servicing the water and municipalities.
Martha, do you wanna not re-ask your question?
-: Oh, thank you, President Batjer.
Yes, it's just looking at that last slide actually
that you did talk about, but it is not quite covered there.
Is this planning and coordination
with the critical facilities in your area
and the first responders.
And in particularly with the focus of today
in the AFN community, the need has been really reiterated.
In addition, obviously to having that in-home backup power,
there's a needed to actually be able
to continue to communicate.
And can you talk about what you're doing to really be
in coordination with your local telecommunication providers?
-: So in our previous efforts and I guess first, let me say,
I may not be able to provide a specific response
to that question on,
regarding a specific provider or a specific location
but what I can say is that during the 2019/2020 timeframe,
we held numerous public meetings
both with the local emergency responders.
We held workshops, we reached out directly to those types
of providers in the community, getting them to engage
on the topic.
And as I hopefully highlighted in the presentation today,
we plan to make continued improvement on that front
by the addition of additional resources within Pacific Power
to continue that outreach, to continue that coordination
and I believe that through enhancement
of the emergency management organization,
along with enhancement of our weather forecasting,
that will hopefully close that gap if there is any gap.
-: Okay, we are at 9:45.
Are there any other, or is there a final question?
-: I just wanted to,
others who haven't asked a question yet, thanks.
-: This is Darcie Houck.
I just wanted to ask
if you could briefly talk about your tribal coordination
and consultation with the tribes in your territory.
-: Okay, good question.
Yeah, so we did make outreach earlier during this process
and it's my understanding that we do have members
of the tribe as part
of our wildfire safety advisory board committees,
where they hold routine meetings
and I don't have any other specific feedback or concerns
at this time with respect to that particular stakeholder.
-: Thank you. -: I think it would be helpful
if you, when you're giving us other information
that we've asked for, Mr. Lucas,
if you could also give us some more detail
about your communication with the tribes
and any individual consultation that you're having
with the tribes, not just the overall PSPS meetings and
of the larger group but specifically what are you doing
with the individual tribes in your service territory?
-: Okay. -: Okay.
Any other final questions?
Chief Deputy Curry or Chief Porter,
any questions to PacifiCorp?
-: Nothing from me, this is Tina.
Thank you so much for the presentation.
-: You bet, okay.
With that, thank you very much PacificCorp (indistinct).
Woman: From CAL FIRE had his hand up.
-: I couldn't see it.
Okay, please go forward, please.
-: (indistinct) hardening, do you have any percentages
of the replacement that you've already done?
You gave some targets for 2021 numbers,
but for pole replacements, for example,
your target addition is only 3% of the overall target.
So just curious how much you've already done
and then the second part related
to the infrastructure hardening is,
do you include asset health and the age
of the infrastructure in your PSPS decision-making.
-: So first question, I don't have the specific numbers on.
Getting some feedback.
So I apologize for that.
So I don't have the specific numbers on percent complete.
I mean, I think initially,
given that we are operating under our second approved plan
and as we've continued to enhance our capability
to assess the risk and develop risk models like highlighted
in the most recent 2021 update filing,
there has been some shifting in priorities
with respect to hardening.
It has taken a little bit
of time get those programs up to speed.
One of the other efforts not highlighted here today though
in our 2021 update filing,
we do point out all of those specific numbers
that you were asking about and we can go back and pull some
of those out if that would be helpful.
Now, with respect to the last question.
As I mentioned earlier in the presentation,
when we began to evaluate a PSPS based
on a longer term weather forecast, we do look
at overall asset health,
a number of outstanding system conditions,
status of vegetation work on the system,
as well as those other items that I highlighted
in ultimately making that decision.
Recognizing that a number of the risks that we're attempting
to mitigate are very challenging,
especially in the context of vegetation.
-: Is there any followup Chief Berlant?
Folks are gonna have to speak up
because I can't see everybody on like landscape.
Okay, with that.
-: Sorry, President Batjer, just real quickly on
that last point that Mr. Lucas made
on the status of vegetation.
Do you have more specific examples that obviously,
that's a big focus for all of us right now.
Are you saying you look at putting additional areas
into shut off if there vegetation management has
not met a certain threshold?
Lucas: No Commissioner, (indistinct).
-: Yeah. -: Sorry about that.
No, my comment was in the context
or relative to the PSPS zones
that I highlighted in the presentation.
-: Right, I'm just trying to connect it to,
when you say you're using the vegetation,
your status on vegetation management,
can you give an example of how you're using that input?
-: Sure, yes.
I mean, so when we think about vegetation management
across a very large system.
It's an ongoing continuous effort or work effort to ensure
that vegetation is not only in compliance
with the regulatory obligations but also in a situation
or in a condition that minimizes the overall wildfire risk.
It's not, as I'm sure you're aware something
that can be completed and then you can forget about it.
So for my example, if we believe we may be at risk
in an area of a PSPS implementation,
we dispatch additional vegetation crews to the field
to begin, I hate to use the word last minute evaluation
but pre-event evaluation of the vegetation
because those things can change relative
to the last time the scheduled work was performed.
So that's what intended to convey.
Guzman: Okay, thank you.
-: And this is Chief Porter.
Just to confirm, that's not in lieu
of doing the proactive vegetation management work
that is ongoing, correct.
It's just a response to an event that may be happening
and further tuning your process.
Is that a fair assessment?
-: That is correct. -: Thank you.
And thank you, chief Berlant.
Thank you, President Batjer for indulging us.
-: Absolutely, that's what we're all here
for today Chief Porter.
Any final questions before we move on
to our next presentation?
-: President Batjer, just an observation
in the grid hardening.
4,326 poles that are identified as needing replacement
in 2021, only replacing 128 poles.
And so even the follow on from the utility
do you have a better understanding of the context
of that number.
I imagine there's a risk assessment that's done
for the panoply of things that are being done
and we've heard about some of that today
but it just looked like such a small number compared
to the magnitude of the poles that need replacing.
-: It is recognizing that we're still fairly early
in the overall wildfire mitigation planning
and scoping process.
We recently, as submitted in our 2021 update have improved
upon our overall risk assessment and mapping
that will guide us and direct us
on the asset hardening type projects
that we'll complete over the next two, three
and six years, for example.
-: Okay, with that, I think we will move on
to our next presentation.
I want to thank PacifiCorp for your presentation
and we look very much forward to the follow-up answers
to some of our questions.
So thank you, Stefan and David.
Thank you very much.
-: Thank you President Batjer. -: Thank you
-: Okay, well, we're running a little bit behind now.
We are now going to be,
the presentation will now be turned to SDG&E
and President Bruce Folkmann will be giving
that presentation.
We have about 30 minutes for the presentation
and discussion.
So just want everyone to be mindful of that.
We're running a little bit behind already.
Thank you, President Folkmann.
-: Okay, Thank you President Batjer.
Good morning.
My name is Bruce Folkmann.
I'm the president and chief financial officer
for San Diego Gas and Electric.
Thank you for the opportunity to come before you today
to address SDG&E's execution of 2020 PSPS events.
John Jenkins, our vice president of operations,
will provide more details regarding last year's events
and the specific circumstances we observed,
impacts on our system
but I'll provide a little bit of background if I may,
in particular, how we prepare for an upcoming season.
The extreme weather events our region experienced
last year were relatively unprecedented.
We had 11 Santa Ana wind events that resulted
in red flag warnings of which five required a PSPS response.
In executing PSPS, the safety of our customers, employees
and the communities we serve is always our highest priority.
And the way we prepare for those events can be broken
into four categories really.
We prepare assets, we prepare ourselves at SDG&E,
we prepare our community safety partners
and above all, we prepare our customers.
Let me touch on preparing our assets.
As I think all of you are aware,
we have an extensive weather monitoring station system
in our service territory.
We've added about 30 additional weather stations
over the past year,
but I think the particular improvement I'd like
to highlight there is that we've also moved
to a 3O second sampling interval
and this gives us much more detailed information.
And for example, we can distinguish
between a limited gust situation
versus continuous high wind situations.
We are using artificial intelligence based predictive models
to increase the accuracy of our forecasts.
We continue to enhance our vegetation risk index.
We are using human factors, engineering
and human machine interface to help integrate all
of this information into our PSPS management
and we think all of that adds up
to a much more successful ability to respond to an event.
When I look at our fixed assets,
I did wanna highlight a few changes
that we've made that we think are
also very significant risk mitigation factors.
We under grounded about 30 miles in 2020 for wildfire
and PSPS mitigation purposes exclusively.
This is at the end of the day, the only way to really,
we believe achieve nearly 100% confidence
that we've eliminated the risk of wildfire
but we use kind of a cost-based approach in our,
the way we invest in falling conductor protections,
covered conductors, our traditional fire hardening.
Our own private LTE network is being built out
to improve communications.
We're doing all of these things
to help ensure our infrastructure is as safe as possible.
One area that we've particularly pioneered recently
is the use of drones to inspect our assets.
It gives us an entirely different perspective
and I'm particularly excited about this one because
of the way we've been able to leverage technology
and use automated image processing to eventually we hope,
eliminate human intervention
in evaluating what these photos reveal.
In the next category I wanted
to talk about preparing ourselves.
The COVID pandemic was pretty unique.
So the main thing that we focused on here was kind
of having a level one, two, three approach
to level one, 100% virtual EOC.
Level two, where individuals can report
to a company location if they're having connectivity issues.
Level three, certain key positions respond in person
to an EOC physically to manage events
if the circumstances ever warrant.
In particular, our training
and exercise plan included two commander trainings
and workshops,
seven emergency operation center responder trainings
and three tabletop exercises.
We believe that sets us up very well
for success this past season
and we'll use a similar model going forward.
The third category
is preparing our community safety partners.
We hosted four public safety power workshops with attendance
from fire chiefs, emergency management agencies
in San Diego County focused on PSPS, wildfire
and COVID-19 response plans.
We continue to partner.
I'm very excited about our partnership with CAL FIRE
and the San Diego Sheriff's Department and provided training
in concert with those organizations
for standardized evacuation plans and protocols county wide.
We coordinate weekly with the leadership of Cal OES,
CAL FIRE and CPUC in preparation for wildfire seasons.
The third category, I'm sorry, the fourth category
and most important is preparing our customers.
Prior to last year's fire season,
we developed a few technology tools,
a PSPS mobile application, mobile phone alerts,
electronic roadside signage in PSPS areas,
radio spots for real-time updates and other techniques
to help ensure that we had the best partnership model
with our customers so they can understand what was coming.
All Medical Baseline customers who experienced a PSPS event
in 2019 were offered a portable renewable generator
and an additional 1200 customers were subsidized
by SDG&E in the HFTD.
We continue to use these advanced stakeholder communications
remote emergency operation center tours and outreach events
to align preparedness
and it includes four webinars this past season
to inform customers how to be prepared
for the threat of wildfire.
Over a dozen stakeholders
in the wildfire community organized five drive
through wildfire safety fairs to communicate
for those most prone to PSPS
and we implemented drive through community resource centers
to operate safely during PSPS
in combination with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Maintaining a close collaboration with the county
of the office of emergency services
and county health departments is also a priority.
We continue to integrate feedback from our community leaders
through our wildfire safety community advisory council.
In closing, I wanted to assure you that our commitment
to the safety of our customers
and the communities we serve is unwavering.
We continue to work with state leaders, yourselves,
agencies and other customers to help identify
and implement the right solutions to adequately address
and minimize the impacts of PSPS.
Continuous innovation and improvement are a hallmark
of our company culture and will continue to be certainly
as long as I'm with the company.
I look forward to answering any questions you may have
and hearing from members of the public
and now we can either take a couple of questions
or I'll turn it over to John Jenkins
for a more specific analysis of 2020 PSPS events.
-: Bruce, I have a couple of questions real quickly
before we move on.
You said you underground 30 miles was the lines,
I think that I heard that correctly.
-: Right. -: Do you for the next,
for 2021, 2022 and this might be
in your wildfire mitigation plan, I'm not certain
but how many more miles of under grounding do you plan for?
-: We will continue to underground.
It being a relatively new program,
I think we're anticipating completing
actually somewhat fewer miles, about 25 miles in 2021
as we ramp this up but 80 miles in the next year.
I think that's approximately what we're targeting
in our WMP.
-: Okay, thank you.
And on the Medical Baseline customers
that you provided portable remote backup generation to,
have you completed the full list
that I know you all have testified before us on before?
Have you completed the full list
of Medical Baseline customers that have asked for
or would like to have some kind of backup for their home?
-: I appreciate the question Commissioner.
I'll let John speak to the details, but I will tell you,
we did offer a generator.
Many of our customers actually don't take it
because they already had alternate facilities aligned.
So there's a range of approaches that may be appropriate
but maybe I'll let John touch
on your more detailed questions with regard to completeness.
-: Okay, thank you.
I'll turn the mic over to others for any questions
that you might have of Bruce.
Yes, Mr. Rechtschaffen.
-: If I could enter, just on that one, when John,
when you answer, I heard Bruce and just to follow up
on what President Batjer said,
I thought I heard you say
that you provided a renewable generator,
a backup generator to all customers who were affected
by PSPS events
and then you were subsidizing an additional 1200.
Is that correct?
-: Yes, that is correct.
We offered renewable generation
to all the Medical Baseline affected.
Not all of them accepted it because I think they already had
potentially other backup means but yes,
and 1200 generators were subsidized among the HFTD.
I don't think that 1200 includes situations where we have,
for example, outstanding rebates now.
So we're aware
of how many customers have downloaded the document
that's necessary.
Some of those may still be pending in terms of processing.
-: Is this a rolling list?
In other words, you had five events in this last year.
Do you expand the list of everyone you're outreaching to
to include that broader set of customers who were affected
in 2020?
Am I clear about that question?
-: You are clear.
I'll let John speak to it in a little bit of detail,
but I think it's probably fair
to say we also revisit the design of these programs
as we move forward to help ensure they are
as effective as possible.
It may not necessarily mean that
that's the perfect approach.
If you've ever been affected, you receive an offer
but it's certainly a place to start.
I would just say and then I'll move on is
it's worth responding or outreaching multiple times,
even if a customer might not pick up on the offer
in one year before continuing to make
that offer available going forward
because they may be in a different situation
in the next year.
-: Sure, we completely agree.
We agree.
-: Speak up if you haven't. -: With that perhaps I'll.
-: If the dais has any other questions of Bruce?
Okay -: Oh.
I just have one quick question going back.
Also, if you can touch on tribal consultation
as well as how you address customers
that may need electricity for pumping water,
if they use wells,
whether they were provided backup generation
or how you were able to coordinate with those customers
that again, needed electricity to pump water.
-: Of course, we'll speak to that as we go
through John's presentation.
-: Okay, good.
Well with that, let's move on to John's presentation.
-: Thank you. -: All right,
just wanna do a quick sound check.
Can people hear me?
-: Yes, we can hear you fine.
-: Okay, thank you very much and there we go.
As Bruce mentioned, my name is John Jenkins,
I'm San Diego Gas and Electric's vice-president
of electric system operations and wildfire mitigation
and we'll go ahead and jump right in here
in the essence of time.
So go to the first slide, please.
As Bruce mentioned, we had 11 red flag warning events
in what was our 2020 fire season,
even though it extended into 2021.
There's a lot of unique things about this,
one is that the number.
We typically average around three
to four red flag warning events in a season.
So this was obviously a much larger number
than we're used to.
In addition to that, the first couple of events started
in September and then finished up with a couple
of events in mid January.
This is a longer period than we're used to as well.
We're traditionally late October, early November
for red flag warning events.
The wildfires in 2003 were in October.
The wildfires in 2007 were October.
Our largest PSPS event up to 2020 was October 31st of 2019.
So it is odd for us to have events in September
through January.
One more unique thing and it'll be the focus
for the rest of the discussion
on this slide is the December 2nd
through 4th event ended up being our largest event
by far that we've ever had
and SDG&E hasn't changed its decision-making parameters
or expanded the scope of PSPS.
It's simply due to the magnitude of the event and going
through some of the statistics related to this event.
If you look at, we have 220 weather stations
in our service territory in the,
most in the high fire threat district, obviously.
If you look at the 20 weather stations
that saw the highest gust,
if you take the average of the gusts that were seen
at those weather stations,
the average was 71 miles per hour.
This is an extremely strong event.
We had 60 mile an hour winds at Del Mar
for those of you familiar with San Diego,
just to put that in perspective.
Of our 220 weather stations, 126, so over half
of them experienced their 99th percentile wind speed,
meaning they only see that wind speed 1% of the time
and then probably this is the most impressive statistic
that a lot of these weather stations have been around
for the better part of a decade, 43 of them.
So 20% saw their records broke on that particular wind event
So very, very strong wind event with peaks of,
a peak gust of 94 miles an hour
at our Sill Hill weather station.
Prior to the event, we notified 95,000 customers.
We ended up de-energizing 73,000 customers.
We opened up 10 community resource centers
and provided information and services to almost 2,700 cars
in the drive through format due to the pandemic.
So extremely proud of the team with our ability
to set this up and execute
on the community resource centers, given the conditions.
Next slide, please.
Some additional statistics related to the events.
You can see the peak winds on the top left.
So there's obviously strong winds in every event
but to give you an idea of the widespread nature
of the December 2nd through 4th event,
going over one graph to the right there.
73,000 customers ended up being de-energized
and you can see the other four events were 49, 395.
15.3 was our kind of our typical strong event in the past
that was more of a event representative of what's happened
in years past but we did find 14 things that needed
to be corrected or repaired prior
to safely re energizing the circuits
on that December 2nd through 4th event
and a handful of other issues
in the other two events in the later part of December.
The average outage duration,
SDG&E really makes these decisions to de-energize customers
on a segment by segment basis.
So looking at the top graph up there,
took 80 segments to de-energize the 73,000 customers.
So around 900 customers per segment,
so we look at each individual segment.
We look at the wind speeds.
We take observer reports, any other information
that we have related to that area to make a decision
so we can really take customers off at the appropriate time
to mitigate the risk and keep them out
as little time as possible.
And then we use the same sort of methodology with looking
in the segment by segment by segment basis
to reenergize the customers.
So this kept the average outage duration,
even though it was a three-day event,
the average customer was out 34 hours on the largest event.
Our typical events in the past have been around 24 hours
for larger events.
And then in our higher elevations, we have customers
that will be the first to see the winds
but there will also be the last
to have the winds leave the area
and so there's a very small population of customers
that end up being the longest duration outages
and for that largest event, it was just over 60 hours.
Next slide please.
One more thing that we would like to show the group here is,
we are seeing an unfortunate trend.
These are three of our typical windy areas.
So prone to PSPS events.
They're in the communities of Valley Center, Alpine
and Cuyamaca.
Going back to again, the weather data that we've had
for nearly a decade at these weather stations,
looking at the number of occurrences
of high wind events, we are seeing an increasing trend
and thus the 11 red flag warning events in 2020.
But looking back over time,
you can see the red lines are the trend lines for the number
of occurrences that we're seeing at some of our windy areas.
Next slide, please.
What are we doing to mitigate the impacts?
Obviously we've been doing system hardening
for the past 10 plus years with our transmission system
and distribution system.
In 2020, we hardened 246 miles of electric transmission
and distribution lines.
We also use some of these programs
to help mitigate the impact
and I'm gonna go into greater detail
on the generator programs and microgrids in just a minute.
But in 2020, we installed 30 new weather stations.
Every time we go through a fire season, we identify areas
that are covered by one weather station and we find out that
it would be beneficial to have an additional weather station
or weather stations to further divide this area
because there's different things going on with the climates
in those areas and this allows us to make better,
more refined decisions and reduce the impact to customers.
There's sectionalizing devices associated
with those weather stations.
So these two really go hand in hand
and in 2020, this saved impacts
to 5,773 customers by new devices that we installed
on the system.
In a similar vein, we find areas
that we can transfer portions of those circuits
to adjacent circuits where
maybe they aren't seeing the same weather impacts
as sort of some upstream customers are on that same circuit.
So we identified 156 customers that we were able
to ship to different areas and keep them safely with power
during some of these events.
The next slide please.
Hopefully this will cover some of the questions
on the generators that were coming up.
Bruce mentioned that every Medical Baseline customer
in 2019 that experienced a PSPS event,
we offered a portable generator to in 2020.
We ended up deploying 1,334 of those battery storage units.
We did all this by September 1st.
So we were able to get them out to the customers
before they needed them.
We did have an 85% acceptance rate.
So very high acceptance rate for these units.
The majority of the reasons for people
that didn't accept them were,
they already had generation backup
at their homes and I believe
it was Commissioner Rechtschaffen asked a question about,
we will make sure that they get offered the units again,
if they turned us down the first go around.
We're planning to increase this
to over 2000 deployments in 2021.
This should cover every Medical Baseline customer.
Obviously we had an increased number this year.
This should cover every Medical Baseline customer
that had an outage in 2019 or 2020.
Bruce also mentioned we had a generator assistance program,
which is really a rebate program
where qualifying HTFD customers get
to purchase a small portable generator
where SDG&E will rebate 50% of the cost of that.
If you're a qualifying low-income customer,
it's a 75% rebate.
Which ends up being about $150 out of pocket.
So it's a very good deal
to provide a small portable generator to customers
that may need it.
What we have here pictured is our whole home generator.
We have certain customers that just
with the cost effectiveness of doing hardening,
we have certain pockets where we have 10 miles
of distribution line that would need to be hardened
to help reduce the impacts to a very small number
of customers, let's just say it's 10.
It's actually more cost cost-effective solution
to provide them with backup generation to their home
to mitigate the impacts as opposed
to hardening the entire line.
So that was a very successful program in 2020.
And then our five microgrids.
The number on the previous slide was 348.
I always have to elaborate,
it's not the number of customers with the microgrids,
it's the types of customers that they are.
The majority of these locations are sort
of the community town centers, if you will
and so they provide vital goods and services
to the residents in the entire surrounding area.
Things like schools, urgent cares, grocery stores,
gas stations, some of those essential goods and services
that people need, keeps those areas with power
during these events.
And so we had five microgrids operating in 2021.
I mean, sorry, in 2020.
-: (indistinct) just for a second.
This is Marybel.
Of those five microgrids.
There backup generation is currently,
I'm assuming natural gas but it your note says
that renewable is an option for 2021.
What type of renewable are you offering or hoping to install
and where are you on that?
-: Great question.
It's a combination of the five sites,
energy storage or energy storage in conjunction
with PV panels.
And there's a couple of different types
of energy storage too.
We have traditional lithium-ion.
We also have a lithium, or I'm sorry,
a flow battery as another technology that we're exploring.
Just the reasons that they weren't ready for 2020
with the renewable option.
There were a lot of supply chain issues due to COVID
in the first half of 2020 and so they were energized
with fossil fuel generation but we're getting all
of the infrastructure installed that I just mentioned
to have them renewable for fire season in 2021.
Hopefully that answered your question.
-: Yes, it did, thank you.
-: Oh, you're very welcome.
So, I think we can go ahead two slides here.
We're continuing to leverage technology.
Bruce alluded to it a little bit
but when we first installed our weather stations
over a decade ago, it was great for us
to have the largest wind gusts seen
in every 10 minute interval and allowed us
to make great decisions but what we were finding out is,
there's a lot that can happen in 10 minutes
and so we may get a wind gust recorded
in a 10 minute interval that said 60 miles an hour,
that would lead us to make a decision to reduce the risk for
that area and possibly de-energize the infrastructure
but what we're finding out is with 30 second intervals,
we do have areas that we'll see one gust
in a 10-minute period that was, let's say,
55 miles per hour but then the rest of the winds
in that 10 minute interval were well below 40.
So it causes us to make different decisions.
In a lot of cases, keep customers energized
during these conditions.
So over the last two years,
every weather station now has the ability
for us to obtain 30 second weather reads.
We've had our higher potential index
in play for a long time,
but this also allows us to keep, reduce the impacts of PSPS
and keep customers energized because if you look
at our red flag warning area, it's a very broad wide area.
Our FPI is broken down into smaller chunks of area
within our service territory and it's much more detailed.
It takes into account live fuel moisture,
dead fuel moisture, relative humidity,
the greenness of the grasses in addition to wind speeds.
And really that's how we were able to,
I'm gonna say only, we don't wanna minimize the impact
of PSPS but we only used Public Safety Power Shutoff
in the five of the 11 red flag warning events because
in many of those our fire potential index was elevated
but not extreme and therefore causes us
to make different decisions in those cases.
We'll go ahead and move on to the next slide please.
And so what does this mean in terms of numbers?
Again, the December 2nd
through 4th event was a very unique event for us.
All of the generator programs, microgrids, under grounding,
those sorts of things led to a reduction of 7,332 customer
but obviously it was a very large event
and with that sort of impact and strength
of the event, you end up not being able
to leverage your situational awareness tools as much.
It's just so windy and conditions are so bad everywhere.
FPI was an extreme everywhere.
We're not using 30 second data as much because
it's well beyond the thresholds of what we consider safe
to keep energized. But if you look at more
of our traditional Public Safety Power Shutoff events,
we'll use the December 7th through 9th example here,
we de-energized 15,528 customers,
but had we not had our fire potential index
or the ability to get 30 second wind gusts reads,
there would've been an additional 22,860 customers
that would have been de-energized.
So just wanted to show how our tools are utilized
in different scenarios here with different events.
If we can go on and move on to the next slide, please.
We obviously can mitigate the impacts of customers
with keeping their lights on which we've talked about.
We can mitigate the impacts by
at least providing them facilities
that provide crucial goods and services such as the example
of the microgrids.
Another way for us to mitigate the impact is really
to communicate and collaborate with our customers directly,
our public safety partners and our access
and functional needs community-based organizations
to make sure people are getting the information they need
to help navigate these events safely.
Bruce alluded to some of our new technology that we're using
with our PSPS mobile app.
Obviously people are getting phone calls, texts,
emails in eight languages which is being expanded
to 22 languages in 2021.
The roadside signage.
Continuing to work with our tribal communities
and our first responders.
We do this the entire off season and it is not just
during these events, but obviously we do a lot
of communication during the events as well.
Over the past year and a half we've really expanded
our access and functional need network in a partnership
with 2-1-1 San Diego and 2-1-1 Orange County.
This past fire season we were able
to reach over 700 community-based organizations
through this network and then also in
with our communication with our public safety partners
over 2000 plus touch points, every event
and this is some feedback we get from the outreach
with our public safety partners.
88% of the people
that are receiving these notifications feel that
it is either good or great.
So feel really good about the work that we're doing with
communication and collaboration with customers,
public safety partners,
access and functional needs organizations.
The next slide, please.
Just in the essence of time,
we'll just quickly gloss over this one
but the here's some of the information and services
that we provide for our access and functional needs groups.
Next slide please.
And then things that we're doing to continue this great work
in 2021, we've already identified 10 locations
where we're gonna have new weather stations
and associated sectionalizing devices that is going
to possibly help 5,000 customers with impacts
from Public Safety Power Shutoff.
The different generator programs that I described
within the presentation here,
close to 2,500 people will be afforded the opportunity
to get backup generation in some sort of form or fashion.
We're gonna have six microgrids operating in 2021
and under grounding at nine different locations
that are going to help over 1100 customers
for a total of 11,000 customers just with the work
that we're doing this year.
And this is in addition to,
we're gonna be hardening well over 200 miles of transmission
and distribution infrastructure again,
and under grounding 25 miles this year, 80 miles next year
to permanently help mitigate the risk as well
as mitigate the effects of PSPS.
By now, I gave you guys a lot of information
and I'll gladly answer any questions that you have now.
-: Okay, just a reminder to everyone.
We're running about 10 minutes behind
and we have one more presentation before we move
to public comment.
So just be mindful of that as you ask your questions.
I'll turn the mic over to others on the dais.
-: President Batjer. -: Yes.
-: Thank you.
Thank you Mr. Jenkins for the excellent presentation.
Two questions quickly here.
One is, I don't know if we can go back to slide seven
and if you can talk about all the,
obviously wind being major factor in triggering PSPS
but can you talk about (indistinct)
and how you use your vegetation management as a factor
for locational decisions.
Are you using,
well, can you talk about how you use that if at all?
Jenkins: Absolutely.
I believe it was two years ago we started
to develop a vegetation risk index and what this is,
it takes into account the type of tree it is, the species,
the growth rate, the proximity (indistinct)
with sort of clearances do we have, in this particular area
for this particular small segment of circuit.
What historical outages have we seen
in this area related to vegetation?
Is there something about this area
that just causes more contacts than others?
And we took all this data
and it informs a vegetation risk index and it kind of boils
it down into low, medium and high risk areas.
And so if an area has a high vegetation risk index,
it's gonna have a lower threshold for the decision
that we would make to de-energize because of that.
Also we look at the 95th and 99th percentile wind speeds.
We have a lot of data that shows once you get
to a 95th percentile wind speed in an area.
So it doesn't see that wind a whole lot of the time,
the occurrences of vegetation contact dramatically goes up.
So I'm hoping that's answering the question for you.
-: Yes, thank you.
And just understanding that a little deeper would be nice
to receive as a followup because
it sounds like you're doing more than just soil moisture.
You're actually looking at where you're at
with your management and the historical incidents get driven
by vegetation, if I capture that back correctly.
-: You're correct. -: Okay
And then just one quick question on the fixed backup power.
Are you in coordination with your water
and telecommunication providers on those?
Do they receive any sort of,
or are they any of the recipients of
that fixed backup power?
-: We will look at those on an as needed basis,
but with all the work that we've done with either,
whether it's a water authority or communications providers
over the last few years, they've installed backup power
at their facilities in all their critical locations
and we meet with them after the PSPS season is over
and talk about lessons learned and things that we can do
to help provide them information and locations.
And for the last two years, this is the feedback
that we've gotten, that the communication
for these have not had a cell tower without power
because they've had their own backup generation
and it's really been the coordination and communication
that we've had over the last few years
that's enabled that to happen.
-: Okay, that's good to hear on the cell towers,
maybe on some of the other landline providers
as well would be good, but that's good.
Thank you. -: Thank you very well.
-: Are there any other questions from the dais
at this time of Mr. Jenkins?
-: President Batjer, I have a question
for Mr. Jenkins and Bruce.
Given what you just articulated about the changing nature
of winds that you've observed and the length
of the Santa Ana events.
Do you need to more fundamentally reorient
how you're planning for high fire threat risk?
-: That's a great question and Bruce,
I don't know if you wanna take that
or whether you want me to,
I don't want to jump in here ahead myself.
-: Maybe both of us.
I guess what I would say Commissioner is
I think the answer is yes.
Our risk modeling with regard
to wildfire does incorporate some level
of worsening if you will.
The extension of the season, it's a little bit,
it's obviously is a very imprecise science
to predict the future
but what I would tell you is our approach
to hardening has really redoubled.
We are using cover conductor much more extensively
than we have in the past.
We mentioned the strategic under grounding.
So I think you're seeing a shift in our response trying
to kind of accommodate a reasonable balance between the cost
of these improvements and the benefits involved
but I think it's, I'm sure John has more to add,
but it is a nuanced, it's more art than science, frankly
on how far we go here.
-: That's a great, great answer, Bruce.
And as he just mentioned,
we are incorporating a certain worsening
of the risk you will, into our wildfire risk model
that informs what mitigation we do
and prioritizes the mitigation against each other as well.
And that's really what has led, I mean, you're gonna,
in our 2021 update, we sort of see a little bit
of a ramp down of overhead hardening and a ramp up of
if you are overhead hardening with cover conductor
and then a significant ramp up in under grounding.
There's just areas that are prone to high winds
that really the only way to mitigate the risk
as well as the PSPS impacts is
to underground the infrastructure.
So that's really what has started us down this path
with our 2021 WMP update here.
-: Probably the last thing I would add is
that I think it is important.
I mean, we're obviously talking,
this whole session is on PSPS and it is contradictory
to our fiber to shut off the power but I would tell you,
but for these limited areas where we're underground,
we do believe that it is important used properly
to maintain PSPS as a safety mitigation tool.
We certainly hope to reduce its impact.
We've seen a lot of reduction when we look specifically
at a given event and how we used to manage it in the past
but I do think it's an important tool going forward
for the foreseeable future.
-: And just to end it.
One more comment is, we definitely know
that there's an impact to Public Safety Power Shutoff
to our customers and we don't take those decisions lightly,
but in the risk model that I'm describing too,
we've also incorporated the risk of PSPS.
So it is not a risk-free tool.
So we use that to balance out our mitigations
and help select the appropriate type of mitigation and help
to prioritize the work as well.
-: President Batjer, I have a, customer engagement.
-: Can I just, excuse me, Commissioner Shiroma.
Just one last question.
Please. -: Yes.
-: I'm very appreciative
that the San Diego Gas and Electric system is
with the meteorology stations, with sectionalization.
The granularity is a real model.
We heard from Edison's customers
that they were very frustrated with the sheer number
of notifications that they received and just wondered
if there's any insights to how you interact
with your customers towards ensuring that you're getting
in the best information possible
and whether there are any lessons learned there
for others to take a look at.
-: Part of our work is that to get continuously better
at this and so we go out and through these webinars
and community fairs
that we're all obviously doing again this year,
we take back information about ways
that we could have improved and communicated
with our customers better and I think there was a kind
of a question there about the notification process too.
It is a fine line.
You don't want to, it's all based off of a forecast
and you definitely don't wanna be
in a situation where a customer did not get notified
and we ended up having to shut off their power.
And for our large event, for example,
we notified 95,000 customers
and ended up shutting off 73,000.
So we are concerned about over notification
and notification fatigue
but again, we don't wanna have people not get notified
and then end up having their power shut off
during an event.
-: Okay, thank you.
I'm sorry, we're just short on time.
I'm sure there's a number of other questions
that the dais would like to ask
but we're gonna have to move on.
So I really thank you, Mr. Folkmann and Mr. Jenkins
for your presentation and any of our questions
that were asked that you feel that you still need
to provide us more information,
please do not hesitate to do so.
Okay, thank you very much.
And with that, we'll move on to the PG&E presentation
and that will be given by the executive vice president
of operations and chief operating officer, Adam Wright.
And I think Mr. Wright, this is your first time appearing
before us. -: Yes it is President Batjer
and Commissioners, thanks for having me.
Very glad to be here.
Just one short clarification.
Sumeet Singh is with me,
he'll actually walk us through the presentation
and some of the specifics from 2020
and what we're looking at for 2021
but I do appreciate overall,
you having the PG&E team here today to really share
about our Public Safety Power Shutoff program
and the steps we're taking to get better for our customers.
But since this is my first time I would like
to take just a second to get some context on why I'm here.
I've worked my entire career
for the Berkshire Hathaway Energy Family companies,
which is an exceptional organization and I fully intended
to retire from that organization
and I finished my last post there as president
and CEO of MidAmerican Energy Company, Iowa.
Started when I was an 18 year old engineering student
and was really looking forward to settling down in Iowa
in the Mid-West where I was born and raised.
And if you know anything about the Mid-West,
it's a mostly insulated part of the country,
usually the last in first out but being a part
of the industry and being human really for that matter,
made it very difficult to miss the significant challenges
that California and the communities here are facing.
And so despite that distance between California and Iowa,
kept a very close eye on what was taking place here
and so I got a call from the PG&E team to join,
I had a choice to make and that choice really was,
do I stay put and continue to be a valued leader
and tethered to a very stable, very predictable business,
serving very appreciative customers or do I sort of step up
and become a needed leader
to help turn around a company really struggling
to serve it's customers and communities who I saw
as desperate for
and very deserving of a trusted energy partner.
So very humbled for the opportunity to be a part
of this team at a time such as this
as we continue to shift our focus to put our customers
at the center of everything we do.
And I really mean customers not input
for billing determinants but real people with real families
with real businesses, with real aspirations
and who have clearly shared real concerns about the state
of things and putting them
at the center is what we're truly focused on going forward.
And that includes the work that we're focused on
for preventing and responding
to California's increasing wildfire risk.
And that's really what our PSPS program is about.
It's really a last resort for us to prevent wildfires
from impacting people.
We clearly know
that targeted power shut off are a critical tool for us
to keep communities and customers safe but we also know
it comes as a burden to really everyone who is impacted
by them and it carries its own safety risks,
especially for the people who are most vulnerable
and that is not lost on us.
It's also not lost on us that the wildfire season
in California is starting earlier,
it's lasting longer and it's becoming more severe
and more intense.
So everyone here at PG&E understands the need
for urgency and transparency and acting decisively
as we work hard to improve the safety of our systems.
So in my new role, so far, almost been 60 calendar days
since taking the post.
I've done a lot of listening, listening to our coworkers,
listening to customers through comments
that have been captured through our various feedback loops
that we have here and it's very clear that there are things
that we missed in 2019
and that 2020 there were several the lessons learned
that we can build upon going forward
but it's also clear we made meaningful strides
both operationally and in how we support
and serve our customers during PSPS events
but we do have plenty of work to do ahead in 2021.
One of the things that we're doing to get ahead of
it this year is that we're setting up a new organization
and that organization is gonna be focused entirely
on keeping our customers and community safe from wildfires
and we're calling it the wildfire risk organization,
dedicated to the planning and execution
of our wildfire safety work.
Really ensuring that the two components of our program,
which is the planning and execution are fully aligned,
integrated, which being fully candid
that's a place we've faltered in the past
or our plans haven't matched the execution
and this created some gaps
and so singular focus for this group,
plan and execute our wildfire program to a tee
and then quickly recover and improve
whenever we have something that's off.
And so this new organization and really PG&E
as you've probably heard of by now will be managed
through a new operating paradigm.
The lean operating system and lean is really meant
to break down the silos that have plagued PG&E in the past
to give us visibility into performance daily,
it's gonna create routines for problem solving
and of course directing when things are off.
It's a tried and tested and proven operating system
to empower really every employee at every level
to drive meaningful change and to make a difference
and to solve problems and to own the outcomes
for our business.
For me, coming into this organization,
it's really gonna take the mystery out
of a matrix organization and I'm very excited
to stand up this new wildfire risk organization operating
under the lean operating system and to work relentlessly
and tirelessly alongside them
to make sure our energy system is safer and more resilient
for our customers.
So I am here with Sumeet Singh,
who'll be leading this new wildfire risk organization.
He'll talk more about the improvements we're making
in 2021 sort of less than the impact of PSPS events
on our customers.
Clearly we're here to listen.
We can only get better if we take input,
apply it to our programs and processes so
that we can actually serve our customers
and address the needs that our Commission has
from us as well.
So excited to gather this feedback and looking forward
to getting to know you more, hearing more from you
and making California all it can be.
I know there's a ton of potential at PG&E.
There's a ton of opportunity to get better
for our customers and I couldn't be more excited
to be here and to work alongside the leadership team at PG&E
So with that, I'll turn it over to Sumeet
to provide his comments.
-: One quick observation, before we turn to the Sumeet.
Mr. Adam, thank you.
I mean, excusing me Mr. Wright.
Thank you.
I'm glad to hear you say that you realize
that the plans have not matched execution always at PG&E.
Certainly an improvement from 2019 to 2020
but as I said, many times to y'all,
you will be judged by your outcomes, not your plan.
So I'm very glad to hear that realization and understanding.
So with that Summit, why don't we go and turn on,
turn to your presentation?
Adam: I appreciate that comment President Batjer,
thank you.
-: Great, thank you, Adam
and good morning respected President Batjer
and respected Commissioners.
Thank you for the opportunity to engage
in this extremely important forum today.
My name is Sumeet Singh and I have the privilege
of being PG&E's chief risk officer.
Today, I will be sharing an update on three items.
The first is related
to the 2020 Public Safety Power Shutoff events.
The second is the feedback that we have received
from our customers and our communities that we're privileged
to serve after last year's PSPS events
and the third is improvements of PSPS events
that we're committed to making for this year
for our customers and our communities.
I'm happy to take any questions that you have
during this discussion and we also really look forward
to your feedback and the feedback
during the public comments period on how we can continue
to improve our performance during PSPS events.
So if we go to the next slide, please.
I will begin by providing an overview of the events
from last year and the improvements we were able
to make over 2019.
We know how difficult it is for our customers
to be without power and do not take the decision
to de-energize lightly.
We only use PSPS as the last resort for public safety
to prevent significant wildfires.
We know that we did not meet the expectations
of our customers and our communities during 2019
and we own that.
As a result last year, we had an unwavering focus
on providing more support for our customers
and our communities, including reducing the size
and length of PSPS events.
We had six events in 2020 and one in January,
which is the first of it's kind of this year.
Last year, our events impacted 55% fewer customers
or nearly 800,000 less customers in total for the six events
as compared to similar weather events in 2019.
We had a multi-pronged approach on focusing
to make the PSPS events smaller.
The largest driver of this reduction was improved
and more granular weather forecasting capabilities.
We also had a better transmission line scoping process.
We enabled Islanding capabilities
in areas like the Humboldt County
from our Humboldt Bay Generating Station
and we also made great improvements
like sectionalization devices and temporary generation,
including microgrids,
which I'm gonna talk about in a little bit more detail
in a couple of slides.
We also reduced the amount of time it took
to safely restore power
after the adverse weather has passed by 41%.
So we went from 17 hours on average of restoration time
after the all weather clear conditions were achieved down
to 10 hours on average.
To perform this, as part of our largest event,
we had more than 3,200 qualified
on the ground personnel supporting our inspection efforts.
We deployed 65 helicopters to inspect lines from the air,
nearly doubling the fleet that we had in 2019.
We also deployed an airplane that has
and was equipped with lidar technology
to inspect transmission lines at night.
So we don't necessarily lose that time period
from a restoration in an inspection perspective.
We also provided our customers better information resources
and assistance before, during and after PSPS events.
We provided notifications from more than 12 million
of our customers over the six total events
that were available in 13 different languages.
We were successfully able to reach 98.5% of our customers
with accurate notifications in 2020 compared to levels
of the low 90% of customers in 2019.
And for our Medical Baseline customers we were able
to achieve 99.5% accurate notifications.
We obviously have more work to do
but a marked improvement from 2019.
We provided more than 30,000 food packages
through partnerships with local food banks,
more than 6,500 portable batteries that were provided
to our Medical Baseline customers that were in need
and more than 4,500 customers were served through many
of the partnerships that we have
with our community-based organizations
that provide hotel vouchers, transportation
and other critical resources.
These accomplishments could not have occurred
without the extensive input over the past year
from advisory councils, regional councils, customer input,
agency partners and frankly, your input.
We know that even with these improvements, there's more
that we can do and are committed to doing so
in the 2021 season.
So if we go to the next slide, please.
What we've learned and heard following the 2020 PSPS events.
We continue to engage and listen to our customers,
agency partners, take their feedback and implement it
to make these events less impactful.
The feedback has been critical for us
to understand how we continue to improve.
For example,
while our overall customer experience was better last year
and our website has improved,
our information sharing still needs further improvements.
Some of our customers are receiving
either inaccurate notifications or notifications
that were inconsistent with the information
on other channels, like the website.
We also know that anytime our customers lose power
it's a burden and that there are often economic impacts.
We heard that more support is needed for customers
with access and functional needs
and our agency partners also received information
and shared information with us that vary between sources.
We know it is frustrating
for our agency partners when they do not know
which information is the most up-to-date.
We've acted immediately on much of the feedback we heard
during the course of last year's events
and we have benefited tremendously and continue to do so
from advisory councils,
such as the access and functional needs focus council
that we established in April of 2020
that has been providing independent expertise to us
to help ensure that our customer programs,
operations and communications incorporate best practices
to support our AFN customer population now
and in the future.
Additional feedback has directed many
of the other improvements that we're making this year
and I will touch upon three specific areas.
First, in regards to customer support.
Second, in regards to agencies
and we'll also address specifically the request
from Commissioner Guzman in regards to our engagement
with the telecom partners as well as water agency providers
and then also the unwavering focus we have
on continued operational improvements.
So we'll start with the customer support programs
so please of to the next slide, please.
So this year we're improving
by refining our customer notification so
that the information is consistent across all the channels
and the message is clear.
We're expanding our in-language customer outreach
to make available languages to go from 13 to 16.
We have also launched address alerts,
which is a marked improvement
from the zip code alert process we had last year,
which allowed anyone to be notified
of an outage at any address.
And this is really geared
towards helping address master meter accounts,
such as apartment complexes and mobile home parks
and we're also expanding our network
of community-based organization partnerships
with 285 organizations covering our entire service area
and focusing on serving customers with access
and functional needs.
These partnerships provide transportation support,
hotel vouchers and in-language communications.
We're expanding our meal replacement placement
from local food banks and Meals on Wheels programs
to cover every county that's likely to be impacted
by a PSPS event.
We're providing 5,000 additional portable batteries,
totaling over 11,500 batteries
through both our portable battery program
and our community-based organization partnerships.
Last year, we were able to provide 6,500 batteries
and our goal this year is
to make available portable batteries
for all low income Medical Baseline customers
in the high threat fire districts
that would like access to one.
We're continuing to expand our network
of event ready ADA accessible indoor CRC sites when
it's safe to do so given COVID-19
including adding more CRC sites in coordination
with our local agencies.
We're expanding the outreach or the generator rebate program
for customers who rely on well-watered pumps.
We've also made an effort to increase enrollment
in the Medical Baseline customer population.
Last year, we had nearly a 26% increase of the experience
and customers can also now self identify
as having a serious illness or condition
that could become life-threatening
if service is disconnected.
We are hopeful that these resources can help
to ease the burden for customers who are impacted
when we make the difficult decision to turn off power
as a measure of last resort for safety.
Let me turn my attention now to the agency
and the tribal engagement and support,
including the telecom service providers
and water service providers.
So if we go to the next slide, please.
To help guide our improvements this year, we are partnering
with and requesting feedback from cities, counties, tribes,
regulatory agencies on joint solutions.
This includes the partnerships we have
on the listening sessions with the counties, the tribes,
the critical facilities.
We've held 41 listening sessions
following our PSPS events in 2020.
We have working sessions that we have established
with all the emergency managers from the counties and tribes
to prepare for PSPS events and partner on solutions.
We've held 34 working sessions in 2020 and are reaching out
to all counties in our service area beginning of this week
to schedule additional meetings.
We're improving our in-event communications,
including direct engagement
with dedicated agency representatives, including Cal OES,
CAL FIRE and CPUC.
Improving our state agency calls from last year
and also the portable and situational reports
in response to the feedback that we have received.
We're gonna continue to perform PSPS exercises and trainings
with agency, tribes and key stakeholders
to simulate PSPS events and identify areas
for continued improvement ahead of the wildfire season.
Last year, we conducted three full scale PSPS exercises
from June to August
and this year we will be holding two tabletop workshops
and two full-scale exercises in May and July
that include engagement with our agency partners.
We have ongoing regional working groups for key stakeholders
in each of our five regions and advisory committee meetings
that take place every other month.
We've held 10 regional workshops in 2020
and just wrapped up our five regional working group meetings
in the first quarter of this year with key agencies,
public safety partners and AFN stakeholders.
We will hold 15 additional workshops and group meetings
throughout 2021 and we also continue to host
and attend meetings with city councils, board of supervisors
critical facilities and other key stakeholders.
Last year, we held nearly 400 individual meetings.
so this year we've already done 50
and anticipate that we're well on track
to be consistent with last year.
The collaboration with the cities, counties,
tribes and key stakeholders will continue to play a key role
for our improvements.
In relation to specifically the focus
with our tribal communities,
we have reached out to all 62 federally recognized tribes
within our service area to coordinate on CRC locations,
which are the customer resource centers,
our PSPS notification contacts, portal access
and training and local progress updates.
We have a lead as our tribal liaison
and we have included seven additional resources in event
from a support staff perspective to be able to help enable
that tribal liaison function when we're in the course
of a PSPS event, both before, during and after.
They perform site reviews as part of our project work so
that we have acute insights and strong awareness
of the tribal issues.
We're also engaging with the tribal health
to promote Medical Baseline program and connecting
with food pantries and replacement options on tribal lands
to explore potential partnerships.
In regards to the telecom service providers,
we initiated a group in early 2020 to create a forum
for communication providers so that we can provide feedback
and they can provide feedback to us
on our current PSPS implementation protocols.
We have attendees and membership from AT&T,
Verizon Wireless, Comcast, Frontier Communications,
T-Mobile, Consolidated Communications to name a few
amongst others within our service territory
and they've continued to provide us valuable feedback
in regards to our performance in 2020.
While the feedback has been generally positive,
the group has also recommended improvements
for more accessibility to PSPS event information,
including maps in the PSPS portal and the support role
that's provided during PSPS events
by our critical infrastructure lead.
We're also coordinating with the telecom entities leadership
I've personally had several meetings with the leadership
of the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast
and we're supporting
their wireless wire line resiliency plans
in regards to (indistinct) that's informed by insights
on the anticipated frequency and extent of PSPS events based
on our vast meteorological forecast and historical events
that we can share with them
to further help their resiliency plans.
In regards to the water agencies,
we have worked closely with water agencies individually
and via organizations
like the Association of California Water Agencies
to support preparedness for PSPS.
East Bay MUD
and other water agencies are public safety partners to us.
They have portal access during events.
Furthermore, East Bay MUD participated
in one of our full-scale exercises last year
and water agencies participate also
in our regional working groups that I previously mentioned.
We have also held very specific PSPS seminars,
portal trainings and post-season listening sessions
with our water sector and we've also provided and worked
in partnership with EPA's region nine, as an example
to support water agency
best practice standard operating procedures so
that we can enhance the preparedness for PSPS
and other power interruptions.
Notably this work was focused on supporting some
of the smaller and tribal water systems.
My last topic I wanna touch
on is the operational improvements.
So if we go to the last slide, please.
Our wildfire safety efforts are continuing to evolve
and improve every year to reflect lessons learned,
new technology and feedback from our customers
and communities and our approach is reflected
in our 2021 wildfire mitigation plan.
The focus areas for us continue to improve
upon our situational awareness with more weather stations
and high definition cameras.
This year, we will complete the installation
of our advanced weather station
and we'll have one station roughly every 20 miles
along our lines of the high fire threat districts
with a total of 1300 weather stations
by the end of this year.
Next year, we will complete our network
of high definition cameras, which allow us
to have visual access to more than 90%
of the high threat areas in our service area.
In addition to the
near real-time fire detection capabilities
that we have today in place through the NASA GOES-16
and 17 satellites, which we implemented last year.
We're continuing to refine our weather forecasting
and modeling capabilities,
making sure that we can accurately forecast the areas
of highest wildfire risk.
This year, we will be able
to further align our weather forecasting with the areas
that are at a higher risk of potential wildfires
through the use
of the Technosylva fire simulation capabilities.
I think a platform of fire simulation capabilities
that the other IOUs, the respective Commission
and CAL FIRE is well aware of.
And we're also gonna be able
to forecast severe weather one day earlier than last year.
So we'll be able to go
from a rolling four day look ahead forecast
to a five day look ahead, forecast.
We're continuing to make improvements to our electric grid,
including preparing additional microgrids
and installing 250 more sectionalization devices
to further reduce the scope of PSPS.
This is on top of the nearly 600 devices
that we have already installed or automated in 2020.
We're continuing to support CRCs, critical services,
temporary distribution microgrids and substation microgrids,
including looking
for diesel alternative generation technologies
to pilot in 2021.
We're also refining our restoration process
to meet the requirement of having all customers restored
within 24 hours of the adverse weather,
consistent with the CPUC's requirement
and we've got a specific focus
on creating more granular restoration plans for circuits
that are impacted more frequently and located in areas
that are harder for our field personnel to access.
And we're also continuing to harden our system
with stronger poles and covered lines
and also focused under grounding
and taking a very similar approach to the colleagues
that discussed the approach that they're taking
with San Diego Gas and Electric.
We've got an enhanced risk model that is helping us
to be even more focused with our work locations
and we're prioritizing areas that are at the highest risk,
significant wildfires over the course of the last two years.
We have hardened more than 550 miles
and we've got to continue to focus on that effort to be able
to engineer the wildfire risk out of our system.
Lastly, I would like to address the discussions
that are currently taking place with a federal court
regarding a potential change to PSPS criteria this year.
Following our discussions with the CPUC,
we shared our perspective
on the court's proposed conditions.
We share the unwavering focus of both the court
and the CPUC of advancing public safety
and we'll continue working with all stakeholders
to advance a shared objective.
We understand the concerns with the proposed conditions
that have been shared by both the CPUC and the Cal OES.
We agree that the matter should be considered at the CPUC
on an expedited basis and look forward to engaging
with the CPUC's energy division and SED
in the established process as requested by the CPUC
in a letter to us this morning to reach resolution
as quickly as possible in order to plan and prepare
for the upcoming wildfire season.
Thank you again for the opportunity to engage
with you today and I'd be happy to answer any questions
that you may have and we look forward to your input
and the input during the public comment session
on how we can continue to improve.
-: Thank you, Mr. Singh.
Appreciate your presentation very much.
I kept reflecting back on 2019,
thinking how we are certainly not perfect by any means.
We will hear that from our partners this afternoon
but improvement has been made.
I do have one quick question on under grounding.
I don't know that I've heard any
of your under grounding specifics,
miles that you had planned to underground.
How many you have underground.
Do you have that handy?
-: Sure, President Batjer.
I can share the approach with you.
So the last two years we have hardened 550 miles.
A lot of the under grounding that we've done
more than 50 miles over the last couple
of years has been as part of the Butte County rebuild
for the paradise system as you know.
Going forward, we evaluate each project that we look at
from a system hardening lens to identify,
is it most effective from a risk spend efficiency standpoint
to do overhead hardening, to do under grounding
or to do a line removal as was referenced by my colleague
in San Diego Gas and Electric
where in some cases we have significant lines,
five and a half miles or so traversing dense forest,
providing service to four or five customers.
In those instances, we have identified as most prudent
to eliminate that line and provide a remote grid type
of a solution.
So those are the three elements that are part
of our system hardening plan.
And as we've applied that for a lot of the scoping
for OUR 2021 work and going forward into 2022 and 2023,
of the 180 miles that we have forecasted for this year,
we're preparing a lot of the work for under grounding
for 2022 and going forward.
We'll be ramping up
to about 500 miles total per system hardening
and we're seeing roughly 35 to 40% of that being
in the under grounding category, evaluating the risk
from a very granular lens of risk reduced per dollar spent
for the full asset lifecycle cost
for each of those alternatives.
So that's roughly what we're seeing
in the scoping process, President Batjer.
-: Thank you.
I'm going to turn to the rest of the dais
towards doing so very quickly.
Just a time check.
We are running about 15 minutes behind
and we have members of the public, I know standing by
to ask questions.
So we will not cut into their time.
We will shorten our lunch break time.
So I'll just turn to the rest of the dais
for any questions now but just to remind everyone,
let's keep it as efficient as possible, thanks.
-: Yes, go ahead.
I'm sorry.
Speak up.
Is that chief? Yes.
-: I'm not getting the audio.
-: Now, yes okay.
Chief Berlant, we've got to hear you.
(indistinct)
Now. -: Okay, perfect.
So I have a question on your power restoration goals.
You had mentioned that last year you made progress
in reducing your time to restore the power after a PSPS.
In 2019 and 2020 you had specific goals.
In fact, last year your goal was an average of 10 hours.
However, in your 2021 plan looking it over,
your goal is now set and extended
to the CPUC's required 24 hours.
So you're going from a goal of 10 down to up to 24.
So it just seems like your goal is going backwards
and I was wondering if you could maybe expand
on what your actual goal this year will look like.
-: Thank you, chief for that question.
More specifically, the goal for us last year that we had
in the 2020 wildfire mitigation plan wants to restore 98%
or more of our customers within 12 daylight hours
after the weather all clear.
We were able to achieve 95.5% last year and much of
that was attributed to the first event that we had
in September 7th.
If you recall, we had a significant number
of lightning caused fires where a lot
of our helicopter fleet was grounded
and in that specific event, we achieved 91%
and obviously for the remaining five events, didn't have
that runway to be able to recover it.
But nonetheless got to 95.5%.
So our goal chief is to maintain that level
of performance going forward.
So it's not intended to be back for backwards are
referenced in the wildfire mitigation plan was
in recognition to the decision that was put forward as part
of the PSPS OYR in regards
to ensuring how all customers are restored.
A hundred percent of customers were sorted within 24 hours
unless there's extenuating circumstances.
So our intent is not to go backwards.
If anything, our goal is to maintain performance
from last year and further improve going into 2021.
So that's gonna be our continued effort.
We're gonna have access to 65 plus helicopters.
We're gonna have access
to the 3000 plus qualified safety inspectors
and we're gonna have access
to two additional fixed aircraft wings
with lidar capability so we could do the night patrols.
-: I appreciate that explanation.
One quick question. I know we're running out of time.
As you made a lot of progress in other areas
in your wildfire mitigation initiatives,
how is that being taken into account
in your PSPS decision-making for example,
as you're hurting anymore circuits,
as you are continuing completion
of enhancement station management.
Is that data being incorporated
into the overall decision-making
on when to shut the power off?
-: Well, thank you chief for that question.
So in the instances where we have under grounded
and we have made safe the respective circuit
that's providing service to the high fire threat districts
because if we think about how our circuits are configured,
we could have a source that may be
in the non-high fire threat district,
traverses the high fire threat district, comes back out
and it goes back into a high fire threat district
So we have to make that entire circuit
or what we call circuit protection zone safe and hardened
before we can remove that
from a PSPS consideration perspective.
So for under grounding alignment module,
that's absolutely considered
from a PSPS threshold standpoint
and then currently we're working
on a methodology where we do have covered conductor
on what the changes to that threshold
for the decision making is gonna be to be able
to add that additional safety factor that we do get
from the covered conductor and then
that would raise our PSPS threshold.
So that's how we're going to be considering
and including the work we're doing
on the system resiliency side
to further help incorporate the thresholds
and the varying thresholds
from a PSPS decision making standpoint at
that respective circuit level.
-: Thank you President Batjer.
-: Yes, please go ahead.
-: Thank you and thank you, Mr. Singh for answering the water
and telecommunication questions very thoroughly.
Very much appreciate the progress that's been made there.
One small question that you can follow up on.
In the under grounding efforts that you're doing,
are you ensuring that you're at in conduit
for telecommunication facilities as you're under grounding?
-: Thank you for that question, Commissioner Guzman.
So in the case of the Paradise rebuild, we absolutely
are coordinated not just on the gas, the electric
but also the telecom providers
and the instances where we work with the telecom providers
and there's interest on their part as well,
we have a mechanism
by which we have the joint trench shared agreement
that we can rely on for the purposes of having
that joint trench for doing the under grounding.
For the most part, for a lot of the under grounding
that we're doing for fire risk resiliency purposes,
outside of what's happening with the Butte County
and the Paradise rebuild.
What we've primarily seen at the moment is a lot
of us driving that under grounding
from an electrical facility perspective at the moment.
-: Okay, well, I'd like to have a follow up with you on that
but we can keep that as a follow-up
and an opportunity really for these communities
to become more resilient.
And then my final question is,
can you talk a little bit about what the role is gonna be
with the regional vice presidents?
I don't know if I have that title right
on your reorganization proposal.
-: Yes, thank you. Commercial Guzman on that.
Obviously, as you know, is occurring as
part of the regionalization proceeding itself
but as we start to stand up, the regional vice presidents,
we're, as Adam also mentioned with the implementation
of the lean operating system and the use
and standing up the daily operating reviews,
it's the same management philosophy that we're implementing
with all of the wildfire risk
and the all the wildfire mitigation work that we're doing.
So as we stand both of those elements in parallel over time,
the expectation would be
that the regional vice presidents would have oversight
of the wildfire respective activities that are taking place
on the mitigation side within their respective regions.
One example is, the work that we've already started
with the engagement with our emergency management partners,
the local counties, going forward,
that relationship would be owned
by the respective regional vice presidents not just
for the PSPS interactions but all work that's happening
within that respective region.
So we're gonna be very well coordinated as we align to
that both regional structure
as well as what we're implementing as part
of the wildfire risk organization that Adam referenced.
-: Thank you. -: A pleasure.
-: Moving on.
Any other questions of Mr. Singh?
I have a quick one, President Batjer of Cal OES.
Thank you Mr. Singh for your presentation.
One of the areas where we haven't had a lot
of uniformity necessarily across IOUs or
in the different jurisdictions is the way that information
on outages is, the boundaries.
So for example, you mentioned in your slides
that obviously a customer with the address based,
you mentioned zip code based
but is there been any progress towards being able
to provide info to decision-makers
that perhaps has a city boundary, county boundary,
or other ways that they can assure decision-makers
to know the full impact in their jurisdiction?
-: Thanks for that question.
We have continued work to do in that space
and we're working with Cal OES.
To my understanding, working very closely
on the feedback that's been provided on how we can continue
to improve upon the information that we're sharing as part
of the events, the information that we're uploading
in the PSPS portals.
So we've gotten that feedback and we are committed
to ensuring that we meet the expectations of yourself,
of Cal OES as we get into the 2021 season itself.
We also have joint and collaborative sessions
as you may be aware with Cal OES, CAL FIRE,
the other tool and the major IOUs to ensure there's a level
of consistency on the approach that we're taking
and in relationship to the address lookup
that I was referencing or the address alerts,
a lot of that was feedback that we received for homeowners
or individuals that may be in apartment complexes
or in mobile homes where their tenant
typically who has their registered account
with us is the one who's getting notified
but the individuals within the apartments
or the mobile homes may not be getting that notification
but now what they can do with address alert is to enter
that address and provide their contact information
for the master meter account,
so that even though there may not have a customer account
with us, they can still get that notification.
So that's the improved granularity
and capability we've stood up now that's in place.
But in regards to the information exchange
with the agencies and Cal OES, we're committed to working
with you to make sure we provide and meet the needs
that's expected of us.
-: Thank you.
-: Mr. Sing, so quick follow up to that,
on the master meter,
because I was extremely been very concerned about this
in the last two years.
We'll use the program you just described
before we implemented for the 2021 fire season.
-: It will be President Batjer,
it's operational now.
You can go to our website and you can actually sign up
for the address alerts.
-: Have you had good acceptance of that?
-: I don't have that off head,
I know we recently implemented that President Batjer
and we intend to use the same communication vehicles
and channels that we have implemented
and really partnering heavy with many
of our 285 plus community-based organizations
for the outreach, for the communications and engagement
at that local regional level.
So we're optimistic that it's gonna be effective means
by which we can get this message out
of the traditional capability that exists.
-: I know you will not be able to remain this afternoon
but I know you have a colleague who will be
and I think that this should be something
that is talked about there,
we might ask the question of the panel.
If they have awareness of how,
if the access and functional needs community
is indeed an of an understanding
that this is how they can get address alert.
So that's really critical for many to be very aware of that,
important access.
So next question of PG&E?
-: This is Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
We continue to hear a lot of dissatisfaction
from the access and functional needs community
about many people who do not have access to backup batteries
or other equipment.
PG&E has fallen short in getting that equipment
to customers over the past year or two.
Last year, COVID was of course, a very important concern.
You said your intent is
to provide 5,000 additional batteries either directly
or through third party customers this year.
Is there any reason that you can't do that for sure,
is there any reason why that can't be something
that absolutely is done this time around?
-: So thank you Commissioner.
I Apologize if I gave you the sentiment that the intent,
we are committed to doing that
and we will deliver upon that commitment
of the incremental 5,000 for a total of 11,500.
Again, with the objective of ensuring
that every low income Medical Baseline customer
that would like access to one has the ability to get access
to a portable battery.
We have four different options of portable batteries,
we work with the community-based organizations
to understand the specific needs for each
of the Medical Baseline customers
because each of them is using the battery
and electricity for a different device
and the power consumption varies as well,
which is why we have different sizes of portable batteries.
The community-based organizations
like the California Foundation of Independent Living Centers
helps us do those assessments
and we make available the portable batteries
and we will make those available
and that's a commitment from us
but that's not the intent, that will be done.
-: How about a couple more questions so we can get
into our public comment period.
Any other questions?
Go ahead.
-: You had mentioned that you have a program
for backup generation for well pumping?
Could you just briefly describe that and confirm
that those would be batteries and what type
of outreach you're doing to those customers?
-: Yeah, so we've got a soft generator incentive program
for that.
There's about 3,200 plus applications that we have received
and there's, depending on the respective income levels
as well for some of the customers that rely
on well pump is a greater incentive that's provided.
It depends on a customer by customer basis.
We have done, last time I checked
more than 450 interconnections associated
with that specific program.
So it is a pilot program that we initiated in 2020
and we're looking to continue to ramp that up going
into 2021 so that our customers who may not have access
and are relying on well pumps for the purposes of water
and wastewater really that's the intended focus
of that specific program,
which obviously is completely separate
from the backup generation programs that we have related
to our Medical Baseline customers
or what we call our SGF equity resiliency programs,
so those are two completely separate programs
for that intended purpose.
-: Thank you.
Thank you for the detailed presentation as well.
-: Okay, one more question.
Okay, thank you Shiroma.
-: So this has to do with rotation management,
and your public phasing, commitment and programs,
are programs that we've approved.
My question is what is the progress
and do you have crews up there
and will be out there right up to and
through the high fire season
conducting vegetation management
across your utility wide efforts?
-: Thank you Commissioner for that question.
I think you may be aware
of our vegetation management program.
It's three parts to that program,
one is a program that maintains minimum clearance,
which we've had in place for multiple decades.
Second element is the tree mortality program,
which we implemented in 2014 as a result of the drought
and the significant number of dead diamond deceased trees
that we were seeing in our service territory
and then the third program that on-ramp in 2019 goes above
and beyond those two programs,
which is really our enhanced vegetation management
to remove all the overhang as well as do a hazard assessment
for every single strike potential tree.
Since the implementation of that program
in 2019, we have completed 4,500, more than 4,500 miles
of our 25,500 miles of distribution lines
that traverse the high fire threat districts.
In our 2021 WMP we have a minimum forecast
of doing 1800 miles or more on a risk-based basis.
So we're continuing to focus on the highest risk areas
and that's the pace that we have established going forward.
Over the last couple of years, Commissioner,
we have more than doubled the number
of vegetation management resources that are focused
on removing and clearing vegetation away
from our power lines
as well as identifying those potential hazard trees
that could fall into our line on a preventative basis.
So we have crews working across our service territory
at the moment as we speak and they're gonna continue
to do so throughout the entire year.
And in instances,
in cases where we forecast a high fire risk,
we will stand down our vegetation management teams
for that day, two or three days time period so
that we're further reducing the operational risk
of a potential ignition that may occur as a result
of vegetation management work being performed.
But we have more than 4,500 qualified tree crew personnel
and certified arborist and registered arborist
within our service territory at any given point
that are doing the work on a continued basis.
-: Thank you.
-: The pleasure.
-: Okay, thank you to PG&E for your presentation,
appreciate it very much.
I'm going to move now on to the public comment period
of our day.
And as I said earlier, we will not cut
into the public comment period.
We will have the planned amount of time as we did prior
to running over time.
So we will have time for public comment period
until approximately 12:20.
Okay, if you wish to make a public comment,
dial 8008571917 and enter the passcode 5180519#
and press *1 to be placed into the queue
and the operator will take your name
and information if appropriate.
If you have already dialed
into the public comment telephone line,
please press *1 to get into the public comment queue.
You will have two minutes to speak.
Please adhere to two minutes.
You will hear a bell sound, a chime when your time is up.
So please listen for that bell when your time is up.
Please be mindful of the other speakers that are
in the queue.
You'll have met interests for everyone to speak today
and I wanna give everybody the opportunity.
So please be mindful of the two minutes limit.
With that guidance in mind,
I welcome today's speaker and I will now turn back
to the operator
to open the public comment telephone line, operator.
-: Thank you.
Our first public comment comes from Joseph Mitchell.
Your line is open.
Joseph: Good morning, I've a quick concern
and then a question.
Utilities are trying to incorporate climate change
into their long-term plans.
SDG&E today presented some evidence
that winds are trending stronger.
Unusually strong winds have also anecdotally been observed
in Northern California in the last few years.
However, to my knowledge, there's no research calling
for Santa Ana or Diablo winds to strengthen.
In fact, current research suggests that the winds are going
to weaken even if overall fire risk increases
with the length of the fire season.
So if these measured trends are significant,
there may be something that we don't understand going on
in the climate models.
If that's true
and the utilities are using these standard climate models
to predict future risk,
they may be under predicting high wind risk.
So that's something to watch and be concerned about.
Now, when I looked at the wildfire mitigation plans,
I don't see any long-term vision or plan
to eliminate power shutoff.
What sort of changes or technologies would need
to be deployed to eliminate customer impacts,
are these new technologies hardening or a continuation
of current programs or are Californians,
stuck with power shutoff forever, thank you.
-: Thank you, Mr. Mitchell.
The next caller, please.
Operator: Next we have Will Abram,
your line is open.
Will: Thank you very much.
Thank you to the panelists for participating
in this important meeting.
As a wildfire survivor and apparently its proceeding,
I'm increasingly concerned that the political
and financial pressure to reduce the size and the scope
of these PSPS events will increase the size and scope
of wildfires within your territories
because the right quality controls are
not being sufficiently leveraged.
As an example, the innovative use of drones and helicopters
to increase the speed of inspections before we reenergize,
instead of leveraging more on the ground field inspections
of the lines or crowdsourcing these activities is
often cited as an advancement
but if that is at the expense of safety,
I know we would agree that is not a fair trade.
Additionally, I'm concerned that the utilities refuse
to recognize and address their failures
that occur when poor de-energization decisions collide
with catastrophic wildfires.
It can Kate Fire, the Zogg fire,
and potentially the Glass Fire are all catastrophes
that should be lessons learned in terms
of how we make de-energization decisions.
Nowhere within your wildfire mitigation plans
are these fires and failures mentioned, let alone addressed.
How can we see progress in your plans
to address de-energization in a thoughtful manner
if we won't even map the failures from those decisions
to how you are managing PSPS events in the future.
PG&E has stated
that one reason they have not addressed these issues is
that the reports from CAL FIRE have not been released.
I am glad Chief Porter is present here today
but I would like to understand the panelists perspective
on how the lack of release of the CAL FIRE reports
to apparently protect the integrity of criminal
and civil proceedings is getting in the way of our progress
on the management of de-energization
in the important public safety matters
before the Commission.
These reports contain an important evidentiary record
that we need
to improve how we manage de-energization decisions
and keep our residents.
How do we continue to justify the lack of transparency?
The Kincade Fire was two years ago,
We don't have the report and we don't have its findings
represented in your plans.
How can we infuse our safety by not (indistinct)
(loud dinging)
How can we feel assured in your state--
-: Mr. Abrams, I'm sorry, but your time is up.
We appreciate your comments.
Thank you.
-: Operator the next caller please.
Operator: Thank you, next we have Melissa Kasnitz,
your line is open.
Melissa: Thank you.
This is Melissa Kasnitz with the center
for accessible technology, an active party
in this proceeding.
I would like to discuss the process for moving away
from deliberate power shutoffs entirely
as a fire risk strategy.
Well, we want any events that take place to be
as safe as possible for CforAT has concerns about the risk
of normalizing power shutoffs
as just another utility program
that will go on indefinitely.
The reports that we're getting
from the utilities do not appear to be showing a move away
from reliance on shut-offs,
but this move away from a power outages needs
to remain a priority.
In 2018, when this proceeding was first initiated,
the utilities made a prediction that outages would last
for a period of 10 years and that was shocking.
Now it seems like they're being integrated
as an ongoing activity by the utility.
The Commission needs to be pushing the utilities
to phase down reliance on power outages
within the 10 year timeline that was predicted back in 2018,
if not sooner, thank you.
-: Thank you, operator, the next caller please.
Operator: Thank you, next we have Hond,
your line is open.
-: Thank you and good morning.
Thank you for listening to us.
I was the only citizen intervener in the monitorization
of go 95 titles four more than a decade ago.
In that effort we learned
of a San Diego Gas and Electric pilot program
where fewer than 50 customers in the back country
were put into an intentional shutoff area,
they were given generators in exchange for SDG&E
getting power to cut off their power during high winds.
After the Santa Rosa disaster,
the CPUC began considering a proposal
to allow SDG&E type PSPS blackouts in all IOU areas.
But you need to know that your docket office made a mistake.
LHRA was incorrectly noticed
as affecting San Diego County only.
It went to the wrong mailing list.
Nobody in SCE or PGE territory knew
that PSPSs were coming
and when this Commission approved them in 2018,
I was the only person saying,
there may be a time when you need to turn off the power
but we need to look at this very carefully.
The project that was approved,
that your initial PSPS proposal took advantage of the fact
that nobody was asked for their comments.
In fact, the power companies took out the requirement
that San Diego gas was living with,
San Diego Gas and Electric
that they mitigate their outages.
They said nobody wanted mitigation.
That's because nobody knew about it.
So because of that, a very small pilot program
in the back country of San Diego
that included full mitigation
for these came became a Statewide program
with no mitigation.
The IOUs have also plunged headfirst into a program
with almost no public accountability.
We, the public have no metrics by which to judge
whether our power getting shut off or warnings of PSPS's
We have no way to know if these are accurate or not.
They say our weather forecasters are predicting high winds.
They don't issue their weather forecast.
We know what the winds are.
Oftentimes they're much,
much below what we think are justifiable
to turn the power off.
We cannot judge from the reports that SDG&E files
with the state
whether each individual PSPS event was justified.
And I thank you for listening.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, the next caller, please.
-: President Batjer.
This is Rechtschaffen
You're not showing any other callers at this time.
-: Okay, thank you very much, Robert.
With no more callers on the line
that will end the public comment period of the meeting.
I will ask if there are any other questions
from the Commissioners since we still have some time left
because I think a couple of Commissioners had raised a hand
and I didn't get to call on them.
Perhaps we still have representatives
on the line who can answer question.
Are there any other questions from the dais at this time
that I cut off because of our time constraint earlier?
Okay, seeing none
that will take us to our lunch break.
We will start at 1:00 PM with the access
and functional needs round table.
We will have representatives of,
senior executive representatives of all of the IOUs present
for this afternoon sessions, both round tables.
So see you all at one o'clock promptly.
Thank you all.
Operator: This is the conference operator.
President Batjer, you may begin.
-: Thank you very much.
And everyone welcome back to the joint IOUs workshop
on the 2020 Public Safety Power Shutoff event.
I wanna thank you all for your participation this morning.
And as I mentioned earlier, our first round table will be
with the access and functional needs community followed
by a round table with the impacted local government
and tribal governments from across the state followed
by public comment.
We will have public comment at the end
of those two round tables.
I do want to, before I introduce the panel,
I do want to tell those who are participating,
that we have senior leadership from the IOUs and also
from Edison who did not present this morning
but presented earlier in the winter.
So they will be listening in and so I wanted you all to know
that we have SDG&E, the spokesman
and other subject matter experts.
Kevin Payne, the CEO of Edison and from TG
have Laurie Giammona, SVP of customer care.
There are other representatives from the companies as well
but I wanted to underscore that they are participate
or will be on the line this afternoon and listening in.
The first panel will be 90 minutes.
I will now turn to the moderators for our first round table.
David VAn Dyken
from the California Public Utilities Commission
and van Taylor from Cal OES.
David and Vance, could you introduce the panel and begin.
-: I got a text from David for the camp on mute.
-: Robert, do you want to step in
and see if you can help David out.
-: President Batjer.
-: Can you get David on?
He has video but not any audio.
-: President Batjer, Van Dyken is on mute.
-: We're not hearing him Robert.
-: Dyken, we believe that you might be self muted
on your end.
-: Your computer.
-: Hi, can you hear me now? -: Yes.
-: All right, awesome.
Sorry, I have the issues with the phone.
Sorry about that.
So, hello everybody.
My name is David van Dyken,
I am the acting access and functional needs coordinator
at the California Public Utilities Commission.
I wanna thank everybody for their entrance and attendance
at today's access and functional needs round table.
For a round table panelists are comprised
of the executive directors,
different Statewide organizations to advocate for
and support a wide variety of ASN people in California.
The AFN round table will be an opportunity
for our four panelists to ask questions and engage
in conversation directly
with executive level representatives at Pacific Power,
PG&E, Southern California Edison,
and SDG&E regarding Public Safety Power Shutoff issues.
I mean, minutes will be allotted for this question
and answer period and we'll conclude at 2:30.
I will be a co-facilitator for this round table,
L Vance Taylor from the California Governor's office
of emergency services will assist me in facilitation.
Just a quick note about Lance,
well, we use Vance Taylor is the chief of the office
of access and functional needs at Cal OES.
Vance is responsible for ensuring the needs of individuals
with disabilities and persons with access
and functional needs are identified before,
during and after disasters and integrated
into the state's emergency management systems.
Vance was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area.
Vance was diagnosed with a much more dystrophy
as a child and uses a powered wheelchair.
He has worked in Washington DC as an advisor
for two different members of Congress,
directed 63 policy at National Water Association
and been a principal at the top ranks homeland security
and emergency management consulting firm.
Vance is a nationally recognized public speaker
and advocate for individuals with disabilities.
Vance also has a master's degree in Homeland Security
from the University of Connecticut
and an undergraduate degree
from Brigham Young University and Communications.
He is married to his sweetheart Casey,
and they have two wonderful daughters.
Vance and his family live in Rancho Cordova, California.
Vance do you want to add any than that?
-: Oh, thanks everyone,
I need to take you with me everywhere I go.
(chuckles softly)
So, good afternoon,
I wanna start by thanking President Batjer
and CPUC Commissioners for organizing this workshop
and for your commitment to the integration
of access and functional needs.
I took them PSPS events and everything
that the Commission is responsible for.
I would say my name is Vance Taylor,
and I'm the chief of the office
of access and functional needs at Cal OES
and my role in this because historically as a nation,
there have been significant gaps
in how emergency managers plan, prepare, respond and recover
from the bachelors.
With regards to the access and functional needs perspective.
And this is an issue that was really highlighted
during Hurricane Katrina.
It's fair that we saw it out of everyone who perished,
70% of everyone that died had an access
or a functional need.
So recognizing that individuals with disabilities,
older adults and all people with access
for functional needs are disproportionately impacted before,
during and after all disasters not just during major ones.
California certainly need to get ahead of this issue.
So in 2008, California leaned forward
and created the nation's first ever office
of access and functional needs.
As chief, I'm appointed by the Governor.
I serve on the executive leadership team at Cal OES
as an addition to advise, I'm a director and the a Governor.
Mine is really a twofold mission
to identify and then to integrate.
I mean it's the law of California throughout every facet
of the state's emergency management system.
I work in enterprise wide across our directorates,
our programs, our divisions, working externally
with our fellow state agencies and then partnering
with our whole community and CBO stakeholders truck,
We have integrated access and functional needs
within the Cal OES culture, and we've woven it
within the DNA of our agency.
As President Batjer said powerfully earlier today,
she said, quote, "You will be judged by your outcomes,
"not your plan," and quote.
The outcomes of our mission,
that's moved well beyond developing inclusive plan.
Our efforts, commitment and collaboration
with our partners can be measured and decrease suffering
and decrease lots of lights on my California access
functional needs populations.
This is not to say we've arrived
but at Cal OES we recognize there's so much work to be done,
but it is to say that we've developed
a model for integration.
Others, including the IOUs can and should use
to make meaningful progress on this area.
So within the competence of PSPS,
we recognized very plainly, very clearly
that PSPS events threatened the lives, safety
security and far too often even the dignity
of California's most vulnerable populations.
Especially, we trust this issue
to reduce the inequities of its causes
and to overcome disproportional impacts on individuals
with access and works on these.
It's incumbent on the IOUs to take bold,
innovative, proactive action.
Action that oftentimes feel uncomfortable and new
and actually that will require them to really lean forward.
I am eager to hear about how that has been happening,
that is happening and how it will be happening.
I wanna thank all of our panelists and participants
in advance for being here today
for I know what was gonna be a great conversation.
There's a lot of expertise and a lot of commitment
and I think what we'll find is we'll be able to identify,
as I said, what's happening,
identify some gaps and identify solutions that will work
to make all Californians safer, more secure
and more resilient before, during and after PSPS events.
So with that, I'll turn it over to David.
He's gonna introduce a couple of panelists
from I'll interview you,
and then we'll move into our question and answer portion.
-: All right, thank you very much for that Vance.
So to introduce our panelist here.
-: Our first panelist here is Christina Mills,
she is the executive director of the California Foundation
for Independent Living Centers or a CFILC.
This is a Statewide membership association
serving California's independent living centers
and cross disability charity.
In addition, Christina is responsible
for seamlessly implementing half a dozen programs
that are dedicated to increasing the independence
and interdependence of individuals with disabilities.
In 2020, her organization launched disability,
disaster, access and resources program.
The program supports disabled individuals who rely
on electrically powered medical devices
and assistive technology to maintain their safety
and well-being during a disaster
or Public Safety Power Shutoff event.
Christina is also a member of the California Utility Access
and Functional Needs Advisory committee,
the Governor's office on Emergency Service Access,
and Functional Needs Advisory Committee,
the Vaccine Advisory Committee
and the Vaccine Implementation Task Force.
Welcome Christina.
Our second panelist is Susan Henderson.
She joined the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund,
in 1997 and became it's executive director in 2008.
In addition to her executive director responsibilities,
she manages the children and family advocacy
and International Disability Rights programs at your EDF.
She expanded the family advocacy program
to protect the rights of disabled children
in the child wildfire system and launched the disability
and meet the Alliance project or DMAP
to change this sensational cloying
and misinformed disability coverage
that undermines the public policy and legal advances
of the last 35 years it covers separated public awareness
that raises public awareness and helps
to end disability discrimination.
She recently coauthored on behalf of the national council
on disabilities called self driving cars,
mapping access to a technology of revolution.
I think which examines the benefits and challenges
that this autonomous vehicles hold for disabled people.
She works internationally
with other disability led organizations
and tech workshops on disability and human rights.
Ms. Henderson has an MBA, MBA and a BA in anthropology.
Welcome Ms. Henderson.
Vance, do you want to introduce the other two?
-: Absolutely, so Andy Imparato began work in February,
the Executive Director for Disability Rights California
and he had a set of high impact career in Washington, D.C
and disability advocacy and policy while on D.C.
Andy service, disability policy,
Director per chairman, Tom Harkin
from the U.S. Senate committee on health, education,
labor, pensions.
Ann was present, you know, nothing substation about people
with disabilities among other roles.
Most recently he was asked
to join the Biden's COVID-19 health equity task force,
which is helping in developing recommendations
for White House COVID-19 response team
appreciate his leadership and getting here.
Executive director of the California State Council
on the problem around disabilities.
There's forks on Civil Rights Policy and programs
for over 20 years, including them as the Senate,
California attorney general
and as an apprentice for two Governors.
Currently carrying out the counselor's goals are probably
in employment and safety, which we could expect things,
PPB and PSPS.
Last year council's work in five months,
2.4 million Californians and the council of same part
of the year for people with disabilities.
With that, let's go ahead and kick off the Q&A portion
and we'll turn it over to Eric for the first question.
Mr. Carruthers.
-: Yeah, thank you for that great introduction,
you asked her a brief one,
I should have been briefed for him prior to knowing you were
going to be reading them, but thank you so much.
President Batjer, thank you
and thank you to the Commissioners for taking this focus.
We're deeply grateful.
Many of us have been working on this issue since July
of 2019 when Vance called us all together at Cal OES
and we've been deeply involved sometimes weekly
in the IOU AFN Statewide work group.
Also thank you to the senior leadership for engagement
on this panel.
It's an engagement we haven't typically enjoyed
on a Statewide IOU AFN work group
and because we haven't had you there,
let's go ahead and start this conversation off
with a question, which is really a level setting question
for each IOU.
In a simple yes
or no answer is AFN integration a high priority
that your company has developed to ensure safety
and resources for when it comes
to customers who use life saving medical,
or assistive technology devices during PSPS events.
-: Excuse me, hi, this is Melissa Nottingham,
I'm with Pacific Power and I would say yes
to that question, absolutely.
-: Thank you, Melissa. -: Okay Jamie.
-: Hi, this is Laurie Giammona,
I serve as the company's Senior Vice President
of customer care.
We've absolutely integrated AFN, people with disabilities,
into our planning, into our programs and into our structure.
And in fact, have structured a PG&E council so
that we can have ongoing dialogue and learn more
and receive the feedback necessary to continue
to improve our program.
-: Thank you.
-: This is Nicole Howard, up for an Edison.
Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, so I would just answer that affirmatively.
Absolutely, we consider the AFN community
to be a high priority for us and ensuring
that they have everything that they need during PSPS event.
-: Thank you so much, Nicole.
-: Hi, this is Tashonda Taylor,
I am the vice president of customer operations
at San Diego Gas and Electric and absolutely we prioritize
and integrate the access and functional needs customers
that are in need of access and functional needs.
We've done so to the degree
where we have an entire department dedicated to it.
We started out with an individual that was in charge
of the function and holds a spot
in our emergency operations center
and based on the conversations and listening to our partners
we've expanded that to an entire department
and so we're definitely dedicated to supporting the needs.
-: Thank you for Tashonda and I appreciate everybody
with a senior level engagement,
level setting this conversation,
happy to turn it over to Andy now for the next question.
-: Real quick.
I don't think we heard from SCE on that.
-: And I do believe that Mr. Payne is on.
-: And I will just affirm Nicole Howard.
I apologize, many of you have not met me yet.
I am the vice president of customer programs and services
at SCE and I answered affirmatively,
but if Kevin has anything to add, please, please do.
-: All right, well thank you.
Andy had the next question.
-: Yeah, thank you.
Can you hear me okay? -: Loud and clear.
-: So I'm just gonna follow up on Aaron's question again.
I'm Andy Imperato,
I'm the executive director at disability rights, California.
I've been in the role since February of last year
and returning to my home state of California after 30 years
on the East Coast so it's good to be back,
but it's been a rough first year,
wildfires among many other things.
And one of the things I've learned
in doing disability advocacy is the value of having people
with lived experience with disability in leadership
and I think you're seeing that both for the Commission
and for Cal OES, how they've benefited
from having people
with lived experience playing leadership roles
in their organizations.
So my question for each of the IOU representatives
is to just talk about your leadership,
each of your respective leadership teams consists
of chief executive officers, executive vice presidents,
senior vice presidents, vice presidents
and other officials.
Oftentimes the leadership teams are large,
PG&E for example has over 40 corporate and company officers.
So my question for each of you is how many of the folks
on your leadership team, however you define that identify
as people with disabilities or have lived experience
with a disability.
Does your company have a chief executive officer,
executive vice president, senior vice president
or vice-president who was in charge of AFN integration
and is there a member
of your leadership team whose entire portfolio consists
of enterprise wide AFN integration?
-: Okay, I want to start with the PG&E team.
-: Great, Andy, thank you for the question.
In so far as speaking to those folks
on our leadership team that have specific disabilities,
I can't share, I don't have that information to share.
What I will tell you is that as a senior officer
of PG&E, I have responsibility for the programs and services
of our AFN community, our Medical Baseline community.
I have a fully integrated team
that reports directly through me.
So I have three officers on my team.
They all have accountability
for supporting our AFN community.
In addition to that, I have an ADA specialists on our team,
Aaron Johnson, who is with me today
as well as Vanessa Brian are all part
of our integrated team and they also have accountability
for integrated disability focus not only on our PSPS
and emergencies but throughout our organization
and throughout the way that we execute safe
and reliable power for our customers.
-: Okay and move over to Jamie.
-: Hi, thank you for that question.
We support AFN throughout the organization
but specifically under my span of control,
like I said in my introductory comments,
we have a dedicated team to support AFN activities.
We recently secured a dedicated ADA specialist
whose entire role is to integrate needs
of AFN internally and externally.
We take that extremely seriously and we think that
that's our responsibility to have a group that's dedicated
to that function and so like I said earlier,
we've expanded that and we'll continue to look at ways
to support that department and enhance it as much as we can,
but that's what we're dedicated to improving in this space
and hence the support that we've backed behind
on having a dedicated department that's integrated
within my organization and customer operations.
-: Okay, SDG&E.
some non from SDG&E that kind of stuff.
-: I'm sorry, this was to Tashonda,
I just answered for SDG&E.
-: I'm so sorry.
I'm looking at my notes here and trying to make sure that
they have utility to answer in the same order every time,
but sometimes I'll fumble around the companies.
So we've heard from PG&E and SDG&E.
-: This is Nicole.
I can answer for SCE.
Just as a means of a little bit of background.
Again, I'm the Vice President of Customer Programs
and Services at Southern California Edison
and just to level set, until about five months ago,
I served as the Chief Customer Officer, SMUD,
Sacramento Municipal Utility District,
and I have come here looking forward to listening
and learning and really collaborating with this group
of folks in order to understand the important concerns
in front of our AFN communities and
in preparation for PSPS events.
As a person,
myself was functional needs being single-sided deaf.
I definitely share a unique understanding of the urgency
in addressing the identified concerns.
So I am an officer of the organization and in my span
of control, overseeing customer solutions for SCE
it is absolutely a priority.
And again, I think my unique understanding
as in lived experience is going to help us move forward
and continue to do better in the preparation
of our AFN customers and community.
-: Thank you and PacifiCorp.
-: Hello again, this is Melissa
I just wanna say that PacifiCorp,
we are continuously focused on improving what we do
and how we interact with our customers.
And that our executive team is dedicated not only
to creating a work environment that is based
on the principles of the OCEI,
but also as we look more to our customers
on how we can meet our customers where they're at
and address the specific needs for a variety
of different individuals.
Now we have a very small service territory
in Northern California,
but we also have service territory in Oregon and Washington
and one of the things I think that we've seen
as part of not only this PSPS rulemaking
and the implementation of our plan is also
with COVID and the variety of other issues
that have adversely impacted our community.
So I'm here again to listen and learn and get some new ideas
and support from this team and your expertise
to see how we can better incorporate that into our processes
and how we interact with our customers, Thank you.
-: Thank you and does that get to your questions
that you're asking there?
-: Sorry, just taking it off mute.
I think it's helpful.
What I was really trying to get at is what is the level
within the cover,
One of the questions I was asking is what is the level
within the company that owns the AFN function
as their full time job, not as a piece of their portfolio.
And it's not crystal clear to me what the answer to that is,
but that was part of my question.
-: Okay, so I'll perhaps just to follow up,
if anybody wants to chime in on that,
I guess from the CAL OES perspective that would be like,
for example, my role, the entire portfolio
for that and functional needs,
fortunately it's in the title and that position
right that's your senior level executive position,
I think maybe Andy Imparato from our, kind of here,
if that's kind of what you're.
You're wondering, so aprons are part
of what the executive team looks at,
or the attorney, one of the executive team
with AFN in the title or who's portfolio with AFN.
I was pretty that open
for anybody who wants to answer that.
-: Hi, this is Tashonda again
from San Diego Gas and Electric.
So like I stated earlier,
the AFN responsibilities falls under my umbrella.
However, AFN is not in my official title
but I do have a manager that reports within my organization
that is over the AFN responsibilities
and to that manager we have three project managers
that report up through that organization,
including an ADA specialist, as I spoke to earlier.
And I hope that answers the question.
-: Thanks.
Someone else--
-: Well that's an odd thing, you have a game
We have the AFN outreach and communication
in our wildfire mitigation plans
is embedded into our processes,
we don't have a specific dedicated resource
for dealing with AFN, it's more part of what we do
and how we do it.
I do wanna point out with our PSPS events
that we had in 2020, we had less than,
I think we had five customers that have been identified with
that had medical access and functional needs,
Medical Baseline customers that we contacted.
So just to kind of put it in the scope
that we just tasked our employees to embed those needs
into everything they do.
-: Okay, Nicole now.
-: Hi, this is Nicole, I can elaborate
a little bit more on my prior answer,
I think again, I have the responsibility
for this suite of customer solutions and programs,
I think the discipline in terms of ensuring that the needs
of our AFN community are met fall within
I would say the scope of the segmentation management role
that's within my group but it's a priority for many of us
across the organization,
we like to think about all of our customers in our processes
and procedures in the way that we manage our customers
through outage situations
and so, although I probably would be one to have
some accountability over that,
I believe it's something that is ingrained
in our culture and we all feel a shared responsibility
to make sure all of our customers are taken care of.
-: Thanks Nicole.
Aaron?
I guess I have to move specific rep to Aaron, Aaron Johnson.
-: Thanks Vance.
Can you, just wanna make sure I'm coming through,
can you hear me Vance?
-: Yeah, sure I can.
-: So a slightly better question for Laurie
but I'll go ahead and take it.
So we have Vanessa Brian, who's a dedicated senior manager
who does a variety of customer support,
she has three people dedicated to AFN issues on her team,
and we also have individual dedicated to ADA issues
as Tashonda mentioned as well
and we also have event specific roles to communicate
with the community-based organizations
that we even work with to support our customers
during events and those folks,
there are specific event roles that are dedicated
to make sure that they have a liaison.
-: Excellent, thank you.
Okay, so we're gonna switch over to Susan Henderson
for some questions and let's just find the order
on the front end here.
We'll go reverse order, PacifiCorp, SCE, SDG&E and then PG&E
Okay Susan.
-: Okay, hi everybody, this is Susan Henderson
from Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund,
it's nice to see you all.
So thank you for elaborating on the question
that Andy asked upfront,
it sounds like you're all at different,
sort of different places in the process of AFN integration.
So I would like to ask and this is just the quick question,
I have a couple more after this,
but it sounds like some of you have senior leadership
involved in the work but it's not an enterprise,
that's not their sole job
and I appreciate the work that you're all doing
but can you tell us whether you are planning on
or would commit to creating a senior level position
that over, that that's their sole role is overseeing
and ensuring that there's AFN integration
throughout the organization?
-: Hi, I think I'm going first.
I think that's a great idea.
I don't think I'm in a position to commit to that today
but I appreciate that, I will take that back to the team.
-: From representing SCE if I'm next.
-: Yeah. -: Okay.
So again, I think that when I look at the responsibility
of making sure that all of our customers
are adequately served with our solutions
to ensure that their customer experience is one
that meets the value proposition for our customers,
I think that is in alignment with my role,
we do have specific individuals, a senior advisor
that is responsible for the AFN segment of customers,
that really understanding the challenges,
the needs and the solutions that are specifically required
and necessary in order to provide that full range of value
for our ASN community, so I am happy to be able to say
that I think that we have that person in place
and it is a part of the team that I have received.
Part of that role also is to ensure that we are,
as we look at our processes and our procedures
that we are meeting that need for all of our segments
of customers who are at customer experience management.
So I do think that we're headed down the right path,
we may have some improvements that we definitely can make
and look forward to continue to get better in that role
but I do think we have the discipline and the focus
and the passion to ensure
that we're providing those the best positions
for all of our customers and specifically as it relates
to our AFN community
-: Next to call, Tashonda.
-: Thank you.
So, although we have a dedicated department
and a manager along with three project managers
that are dedicated to staffing
the specifically dedicated ASN responsibility,
I feel as if our senior leaders
all have personal responsibility as well.
I, myself participate in the Statewide calls
with my manager in terms of AFN.
Our regional work groups, we are all,
we all stay involved with the action items
and different brainstorming that comes
from working with those teams.
So we feel very proud of standing up a dedicated group,
I think we're open to listening to any of the conversation
as it regards to how far up in the organization that can be,
but I will let you know that as a vice president
of customer operations at SDG&E,
I stay extremely engaged with my manager
for that dedicated effort in terms of what we're doing
to enhance the program, as well as staying involved
with what we need to do to make it more robust,
that we feel good about the positions that we've set up
and the effort that we've put in place so far.
-: Thank you, Aaron?
Laurie: Hi, this Laurie.
-: Also I'm gonna keep picking on the same people
from each IOU so if you feel like there's somebody else
from the IOU, that said, please jump in and do so.
-: All right, thanks.
Well, I'm gonna answer this question
because I ultimately I'm accountable
as the senior executive at PG&E
but we believe in an integrated approach.
We have a team that is comprised of a number of leaders
within the customer organization that is focused on AFN,
our communities of color, with disabilities.
our customers with disabilities and our low income.
And we believe that an integrated approach
will help us provide
in concert with our community-based partners,
the best solutions for our customers.
I also believe that it can't be the sole ownership
of any one executive, we have to have an integrated approach
across our organization,
and examples of this are we have all of our EOC structure,
all those that serve in leadership roles,
when we have our incident command structure activated
are going through AFN training.
We have AFN support when we're activated in emergencies
but more broadly, we wanna really syndicate the needs
of our customers across the organization,
so that there's not just one individual or one team
that has sole responsibility for delivering
for this very important customer group for us.
-: Okay, thank you, I think that was everybody, right?
So the followup,
so can you tell us how your company has been working
with the disability AFN community
to invest in the needs of the people with disabilities
who require backup power during PSPS events
and then just also how you have been measuring
the success of that investment,
and of course how you plan to expand it
because we know that we don't have people with disabilities
with AFN needs covered throughout the state?
-: Excellent, Laurie, do you wanna to tackle that?
-: No, I would love to talk about that
but, and thanks for the question, Susan,
but I'd really like to have Vanessa Brian on our team,
share what we're doing,
I think that she's done a tremendous job
working with all of you and our community leadership
as well as our agency partners
and I'd love to have her share of what we've been doing.
-: Thanks Laurie, confirming folks can hear me?
-: Loud and clear. -: Perfect, thanks Vance.
All right, so in terms, from a PG&E perspective,
we have stood up not only our regional people
with disabilities and aging advisory council,
which some of the folks on the panel participate in
as well as participation
with our joint IOU AFN Advisory Council at the State level,
with which some other folks also participate in
and all of the investor on utilities,
we are also benchmarking with each other.
We have two calls a week
and we explore how we're communicating with customers,
what resources we're offering to our customers
and what we can learn from each other to better provide
a more consistent approach across the state.
Specific to batteries and backup power,
so we have, this is twofold, we started our partnership
with the California Foundation
for Independent Living Centers,
actually late in 2019 those discussions began
and we were able to launch a full partnership in 2020.
Through that partnership, as Christina mentioned,
they developed a disability disaster access
and resources program.
And so that program was able to deploy
over 1000 batteries over the course of 2020.
Now we recognize that backup power batteries
are not the only solution and in many cases,
the disability disaster access and resource centers
were engaging with customers who actually needed more.
So we have a multi-pronged approach.
It might be accessible transportation
to a community resource center
so that they can charge medical devices.
It might be deploying one or more batteries
so that they have enough power
to power the devices that they're using,
or it may be that their power needs
are far more than any portable backup battery could handle,
and in that case, they're able to coordinate hotel stays
for those individuals so that they can have continuous power
outside of the area where the shutoff is taking place.
Now that's really meant to supplement
our portable battery program
and the portable battery program,
when we stood up late in the year,
we were able to deploy over 5,500 batteries,
but before we deployed those,
we actually sent letters to any customer
that we believe could qualify for this program.
Over 22,000 letters were sent to customers,
we engaged with over 12,000 customers and were able
to complete assessments with over 8,000.
Now from those numbers is when we actually arrived
with the deployment of over 5,500 batteries,
again, based on need, some customers were not interested
or they had other solutions, some customers,
the battery was not going to suffice for them
and so, potentially again, looking at supplementing that
through the CFILC partnership during events
and then there are some customers
who we still have the opportunity to revisit
and understand kind of how they would like
to receive different solutions.
We have different size batteries,
we might deploy multiple batteries,
and so again, 6,500 batteries are in customer hands
as of today and we have another 5,000
that are either in inventory, we received them,
or they're on order with the goal of deploying those
throughout the year in 2021.
Our goal Susan really is to make sure that any customer
who resides in a high fire threat area,
who is a Medical Baseline customer and low incomes,
if they would like a portable backup battery
and that is the solution that will work for them,
that they will receive one, so thanks for the question.
-: Thank you.
-: Excellent, SDG&E?
-: Thank you, you know, we're okay.
-: Sorry Tashonda, I just cut in, you go right ahead.
-: No, it's okay, I'm gonna introduce you Danielle,
because you've done so much work in this space
and I want you to share some of it.
At SDG&E, we are really excited about this
because we've launched new support models
with 2-1-1 San Diego and 2-1-1 Orange County,
along with them community based organizations
and so I really would like to introduce
our AFN manager, Danielle Kyd
to elaborate on some of the things
that we've done under the new support model partnerships,
as well as what we've done with supplying generators
for Medical Baseline customers and beyond,
so Danielle, I'll let you elaborate.
-: Thank you Tashonda, and thank you for confirming
that my microphone is working, I appreciate that.
Nice to see you all, Vanessa did a really nice job
describing a lot of the Statewide collaborative efforts
that we have going on across the IOUs
and with our AFN Statewide council and we do a lot of that,
the same type of efforts at the regional level
to constantly incorporate feedback,
but I think our holistic,
our approach really is a holistic look at this.
We want to provide backup battery generation
to the right customers and we also want
to include a broader suite of tools
that can help provide resiliency for our customers
with access and functional needs during PSPS events.
In 2020, we significantly ramped up our,
we call it our generator grant program
and through that we offer no cost generators
to all of our Medical Baseline customers
that had previously been impacted by a PSPS event.
In 2021, we're looking to significantly expand
and in fact, double that program
to reach more like 2,500 customers in our medical base,
I'm sorry, of our Medical Baseline
and other access and functional needs customers
who might have self identify as having disabilities
in our high fire threat district.
Additionally, we did it, Tashonda's point,
launch some support models in 2020
that we're looking to continue and to expand into 2021,
that provide other services as well, such as hotel stays,
accessible transportation, food delivery,
wildfire checks and other items
in order to help customers in case the generator
is not either only or the best solution.
-: Okay, thanks.
-: Excellent
And let's see, SCE.
-: Thank you, I'm gonna ask Jessica Lim, who is our PSPS lead
for the customer experience to offer some insights
into the efforts that we underwent in 2020,
but also some of the improvements
that we're making in 2021, Jessica.
-: Great, thank you.
Thank you Susan for that good question.
I do want to emphasize
what has already been shared by my counterparts,
that Vanessa, Danielle and I
meet regularly on a weekly basis
to talk about how we can better serve our AFN customers.
In terms of backup battery power,
I wanted to share a couple of updates.
Our main backup battery program
is our critical care backup battery program
and as many of you are aware,
we launched this in mid of July of last year,
and I'm happy to report
we've made some really great progress by really expanding,
not only our eligibility criteria
to involve all of our Medical Baseline customers,
but we've also greatly increased our outreach.
So as of March 15th, we have more enrollments
in our critical care backup battery program
than we did all of last year,
so we've really stepped up our efforts there
and happy to announce that.
In terms of our partnerships with our AFN community,
we have partnered with organizations such as 2-1-1,
starting in 2019 to help with backup batteries
as well as other services like transportation,
we've also partnered with the independent living centers
to help with battery donations as well
and we work very closely with our network
of 1600 community-based organizations to help to partner
to understand the needs of our AFN populations.
We also have portable backup battery programs
in case we have customers that don't meet
some of the income eligibility of our other programs.
And then lastly, I just wanna mention
that I really see this as a funnel approach
and instead of just the backup battery programs,
we are expanding our marketing and outreach
so that more and more customers can be enrolled
in our Medical Baseline program as well.
And I'm sure we'll talk more that,
but I just wanted to mention that, and we have been talking
with members of our Statewide AFN council,
such as Eric Luther and Christina Mills,
about leveraging other organizations
such as the in-home support services and regional centers
to really reach that age and population to expand,
and so actually today and tomorrow,
we're holding training sessions
on our Medical Baseline program
with County health care workers of IHFS
and we've gotten a really big turnout so far,
so just a quick overview,
some of the things that we're doing
and Susan, lastly, we measure our progress with our CPOs
with monthly reports in terms of engagements as well.
So thank you.
-: Sure, can I just ask you a quick question,
quick follow-ups since the other folks mentioned
and it will say what's time later,
do you have an idea of a number of,
you were talking about these batteries
that have been deployed in 2020
and if there was some leftover
and what the plan is for 2021?
Like the number of batteries you might be deploying?
-: Yeah, sure, definitely.
So as everyone might be aware,
we did have a bit of a late start in 2020
and so what we are aiming for this year in 2021
is our expanded population
for our critical care backup battery program
is at about 12,000 customers, that's our top number
in terms of our eligibility, according to our database.
So our goal is that we can make
the critical care backup battery program,
we wanna make our customers all 12,000 aware,
which we have been doing
through multiple direct mail letters and calls
and so our goal is that to get as many of our batteries out
to as many of those customers as possible
-: Okay, thank you.
-: Hi there, this is David van Dyken, just a quick time check
that we have 30 minutes left in our panel.
-: Okay, I think PacifiCorp is gonna answer,
and then I think Eric or others, that's a question.
-: Yeah, hi PacifiCorp but, you know,
I kind of talked a little bit and touched base
on the footprint of our service territories,
11,000 square miles with 45, approximately 45,000 customers.
So one of the most critical relationships that we have
is the community-based organizations,
if they're one of the most vital touch points
for their customers and we have a developing,
we will continue to have partnership with them
in order to get information out to our customers
regarding the PSPS and wildfire safety.
As a matter of fact,
we're looking at a more wraparound service
so we're able to provide information on low income rates,
weatherization, Medical Baseline eligibility,
wildfire mitigation plans,
additional notification prior to a PSPS,
So we really partner with and rely heavily on those agencies
to help us get the message out to our customers
that are most in need.
As part of our Pacific Power community resiliency program,
we are just offering grants for renewable backup generators,
the intent of that is to work
with the county emergency management services
to be able to deploy those backup generators
to critical needs customers that are needing the extra help
with oxygen or any other types of metal equipment
in anticipation of a PSPS, so that is a new program,
I look forward to reporting more on that later,
so thank you.
-: Thank you all.
-: Carruthers, you have other questions?
-: Yeah, thank you so much,
I'm glad you brought the Medical Baseline program
because it's a rebate, it's a discount program,
its rate was never designed to be used for a PSPS
or emergency management capacity.
The AFN community has been uniform
in our advice to the IOUs,
move away from the Medical Baseline,
we've urged that you instead,
you've been more effective and meaningful customer program
to be developed to support vulnerable customers,
we've proposed alternate ways that are more inclusive,
Medical Baseline was never designed to be this.
Additionally, it doesn't have the reach
of the saturation it needs to have,
but the reports that SCE gave to the CPUC in December
for a 10-day event in their region, they were very proud
that all 798 customers who were impacted were reached.
This is evidence to us
that this program is resource intensive,
it's labor intensive and it's not getting the reach,
I've consistently advocated that there needs
to be a different way and I guess my question is,
why haven't the IOUs moved away
from the Medical Baseline model
and developed a new, clear, inclusive, proactive plan
that can be in place for the next wildfire season.
-: Let's start with summer PG&E.
-: Thank you, Aaron for that question.
You know, I understand your concern,
we definitely feel like we've been successful
with our Medical Baseline programs thus far.
We have about 12,000 customers
in our high fire threat districts
that are a part of our Medical Baseline customer program
although we're open to hearing and listening today
in terms of recommendations and suggestions
that some of you may have.
I'd like to give Danielle an opportunity
to expand on some of the ways
that we utilize our Medical Baseline program
to support this function, but as I stated before,
we feel confident that we're doing everything we can
to notify and reach out but we're here to learn
and try to get recommendations on other things
that you all may want us to look at and consider,
so we're all ears but I would like Danielle to elaborate
on some of the things we are doing
related to Medical Baseline.
Danielle: Thanks Tashonda
and thank you, Aaron, for that question.
Can you hear me okay?
-: Yes Danielle, we can hear you.
-: Yeah, thanks, I had a little bit of a headset issue.
Thank you, Aaron,
I would like to think that we are heading down that path
and that we've made some progress.
As you know, in 2020, we really did start to develop
a program that's dedicated to our customers
with access and functional needs separately
from Medical Baseline
and that really encompasses our partnership with 2-1-1,
with Jewish family services, in fact and with many others,
it's really about providing support during PSPS events
and it's really separate from Medical Baseline
but to your point, that has been a way
to identify customers who might need assistance
and as that is one of the programs that we do have,
we have continued to in parallel,
continued to more heavily market Medical Baseline
as something we wanna continue in parallel with doing,
to make sure that customers who are eligible
to receive the benefits of that program
while we work with stakeholders like yourself and others
to figure out how we enhance the broader approach
to our customers with access and functional needs.
-: I think the answers so far are really helpful,
because what I'm hearing is that
and we've had the conversation for again a year and a half
at the Statewide ASN body
and it sounds like this might be new request
or new approach or new information,
so I'd like to give me more engagement there,
or Andy I think you had a follow up.
Andy: Actually, I think Christina Mills is gonna go next
and then I'm happy to go after Christina.
-: Thanks Andy, can you hear me?
Great to see everyone today,
Commissioner Rechtschaffen , great to see you
in a different environment besides voice options.
I wanna get straight to the point,
I know time is of the essence, the CDC,
sorry, the CDC reported last year
that one in four people across the nation
has some sort of disability or chronic illness.
Can each of you definitively say that your IOU
has identified customers who rely on power
to maintain life-sustaining medical devices
or assistive technology when the power goes out?
That's question one,
and then what strategy are you going to use
to identify customers moving forward,
and how many total AFN customers
is your company currently tracking and supporting
during a PSPS event?
-: Okay, let's ask, kind of SDG&E here go first.
-: Go ahead Vanessa.
-: Thank you Laurie, sorry for jumping in there.
Christina, thanks for the question.
I mean, we've had this conversation continuously, right?
This is a challenge that we recognize,
so an answer to your question
about have we accurately identified,
I think we have made a big improvement
and what I mean by that
is we have grown our Medical Baseline population
by over 26% in the last year,
we've already grown by another 5% this year,
but we recognize that it's more than just Medical Baseline,
Aaron, to your comment
and so we are incorporating additional categories
into how we're identifying AFN customers
and that includes customers that self-identify
to receive an in-person visit before disconnection
for nonpayment customers that self-identify
as having a person with a disability in the household,
customers who self-select to receive utility communications
in a non-standard format and then customers who indicate
a non-English language preference, we all should note
that we have customers who would be considered
part of the access and functional needs community
that are part of our care and our programs.
So it's a much broader program.
The next question though becomes,
what do those customer groups need and how does it differ?
And if someone is reliant on power
for a medical device needs, for example,
their needs are much different
than someone maybe who is low income.
And so what PG&E has done
is we are partnering with healthcare providers.
So we've had conversations with a number of providers,
they are promoting our Medical Baseline program accordingly
with the individuals that they engage with,
who that may be receiving these devices that they need
to rely upon and we we are also along the same lines
that Jessica mentioned, making sure that we're engaging
with IHSS and that we're doing the appropriate training
so that folks can help customers identify
that this might be the right program for them.
Now, folks may not want to fill out an application,
they may not be able to visit a doctor
to get that certification
so recognize that customers who self-identify
to receive an in-person visit before disconnection
also need to be considered.
Both our Medical Baseline program customers
and individuals who self-identify
to receive an in-person visit before disconnection
will receive the regular notifications
that every customer receives,
they will receive hourly retries to make sure
that they received the notification
and if they do not acknowledge,
we will complete a door knock to make sure that in fact
they are aware that the Public Safety Power Shutoff
is occurring.
The Medical Baseline program does help us prioritize
because we've done analysis and when we look at
to your point, Christina, our entire population of customers
based on census data and the data that we have
in our database, like all the different categories
that I previously mentioned,
we have nearly 80% of our customer base
that then becomes part of the AFN population
and again, we need to prioritize those
who are going to have the most vulnerability
when it comes to the lack of power.
So the last part that I'll point out
and then please feel free to jump in if there's something
that I didn't answer that you were looking for,
is that programs such as the disability disaster access
and resources program do not require that a individual prove
that they are the customer of record,
note that they are part of the Medical Baseline program,
it is simply something that they can take advantage of
if they are impacted by PSPS and they were reliant
on power for medical and independent living needs.
So think we all have an opportunity to continue
to promote the applicable programs.
We are exploring a opportunity to learn
from San Diego Gas and Electric and their relationship
with 2-1-1 and I think we'll continue the conversation
about how we better identify,
and then the second piece really is
what then is the appropriate treatment
depending on that identification
or what are the additional needs of that component
of the populations that we can best serve them?
And we certainly rely on community-based organizations
to help broaden our message.
The final piece that I will add
that we were asked about earlier this morning
is our address alerts.
Now, any customer of any of the utilities is going
to receive notification in advance of a PSPS event
but we recognize that not everyone is a customer of record,
they're not all account holders.
So at PG&E, we have launched the zip code alerts in 2020
and we received feedback through our people
with disabilities and aging advisory council
that those communications were too broad
and they were actually causing some confusion.
The suggestion was, can you get more specific
and so we are happy to report that we have address alerts
that can be received in phone or text,
so interactive voice response or text.
There in 16 languages total, they are live now,
we are going to launch a multichannel promotional campaign
to make sure that individuals are aware of this option
beginning next month and that is going to be advertising,
and it's gonna be direct mail to a number of renters
that we've been able to identify
that are not our customers of record,
we're certainly gonna rely
on our community-based organizations to promote this,
and then the account holders of our master metered accounts,
as well as individuals who hold account
for multi-tenant dwellings,
so that they have this information that they can post
around their locations and make sure
that we're really penetrating the population that needs
to be able to get notification directly from the utility
for the exact address that they're interested in
-: Thanks Vanessa -: Thanks so much
-: I think rather than go to the other three,
are you subscribed to Andy, first question?
-: Okay, thanks Vance.
I guess, what I think a lot of us are realizing
is we had too many questions
and the responses it's we're just not gonna get
through everything we wanted to ask.
So I guess I just wanted to kind of take it to a little bit
of a bigger picture level.
I think what you're hearing from those of us
who've been asked to come and ask questions
from the disability community is we wanna see a higher level
of the conversation and we think if we get a higher level
of conversation we'll accelerate decision-making
and accelerate progress in a way that's gonna save lives
and make the Public Safety Power Shutoffs do less harm
to the people who experience harm when they happen.
So I guess what I would ask on behalf of our group
is if there's an opportunity for us to have a meeting
with leaders in the utilities
that are represented here today
ideally at an SVP level or up
where we can have a little bit more time
to kind of get through all of our questions and suggestions
and then come back to the CPUC with a report out
after we've had a chance to really go through
some of the issues that we're not gonna get to today.
We would really appreciate it and if we could do that
before the end of May,
at least to have the meeting before the end of May
so that it can be impact what happens
in the upcoming fire season, that would be ideal.
So I'll just put that request out there.
-: And again, this is David Van Dyken,
quick time check, we have 15 minutes left in our panel.
-: Okay, so for Andres' question,
but I can see Nicole on the line,
So let me start with SDG&E.
-: Thank you Andy for that question
and we would love the opportunity to have a meeting
to further discuss what more we can do, share some details,
more details about the program
but also just hear your concerns
and figure out what more we can do to try to address those
hopefully before the upcoming fire season.
The only thing I would ask is I think
at the vice-president level would be fine,
but I think you hear a lot of senior advisors
and managers on this call representing our companies
that are on the front lines working with our CDOs,
working with our organizations like 2-1-1 San Diego,
Orange County, the other cities represented,
working on a lot of initiatives
that could also add additional context, color,
and recommendation to the program,
so I wouldn't wanna leave them out,
but I also recognize that at the leadership level,
accountability stops with us
and I would welcome to have that conversation.
-: Okay and SCE.
-: Thank you, I echo Tashanda's comments.
We would welcome that opportunity as well,
and in fact, I think having those ongoing conversations
and that dialogue will help us reach those
go forward solutions that may not be in front of us today,
I think more heads together thinking about
what we can do differently than what we've done in the past
is a good next step and welcome
that opportunity to participate.
I would also extend and this is my personal perspective,
coming from a publicly owned utility prior
to an investor owned.
It might be good to reach out to other utilities
and broaden the circle a little bit.
I think that most utilities
if not all have similar challenges
and making our populations, the AFN population,
and perhaps there's other learnings there
that we can address them after,
so that's just another idea to consider.
-: Thanks Nicole, PacifiCorp?
-: Yeah.
I think that's a wonderful idea.
I definitely see that increased understanding and listening
and being able to understand,
like you said, gave a lot of questions
I may not have been able to answer them
or provide the detail you're looking for,
so we're always open to more dialogue and more communication
because it just leads to a better understanding of the needs
and tapping into your expertise in the work that you do.
So I would say absolutely, yes,
that would be something we'd be willing to do,
and like other utilities have stated,
I think the managers and the directors also
that are boots on the ground that are doing the work,
it would be invaluable as part of that process.
So, thank you.
-: Okay, PG&E.
-: We'd be happy to participate.
We think by bringing all of the IOUs together,
along with those that are appropriate
to really have a broader discussion would be really helpful.
You have my commitment along with Sumeet
who was here earlier today and Aaron
that we as senior leaders will be ready to engage
and participate along with our teams.
So we welcome the opportunity.
I would offer, we've learned so much being part
of the state agency collaborative on this issue,
as well as having our own council at PG&E,
so I hope that we can leverage the learnings
from that extended group as well.
-: Okay, thanks.
Thanks Laurie.
Any queries, think we've got another question for you.
-: Thanks Vance.
It's been really interesting
and I hope everybody's walking away with a new sense
of understanding for this conversation
because after having been engaged in conversations
for a year, year and a half,
what I'm taking away is really a sense of pride in the work
that the IOU's are doing and there seems to be a disconnect
because we just don't think, we're talking about progress,
you're talking about progress with 5% to 25%
and what we're talking about of any progress like 5000%.
We need huge numbers of expansion and proactive,
inclusive ways to get there.
And through the different forums,
somehow that message hasn't been getting through.
So I'm hoping that today that message is getting through.
I'm hoping that our conversations
I understand you need to have a field expertise
but senior level management,
I think has been maybe part of the barrier has been missing
in those conversations,
so I'm hoping that our follow-up conversations,
whether you come to the Statewide ASN task force,
or we come in and meet just in a smaller group is important.
So let's start drilling down
on some of those issues together.
And some of the questions that we still have remaining is,
what is the escalation process and outcomes
for AFN customers who are in need of support
during an active PSPS event?
How do disabled ASN customers know who to contact,
but what to do if they need support during a PSPS event,
how are the IOU's meeting the needs
of the disabled AFN customers during PSPS events?
How many AFN customers that require electric powered medical
or assistive technology devices,
did your company provide resources to in 2020?
And oftentimes how come some of these elements
aren't incorporated into the plans
that you've submitted to the CPUC?
We've made recommendations regarding the effectiveness
of the battery program that PG&E piloted
that it should be expanded to other places,
we can really see that incorporated into your plans.
So I threw a lot out there,
now, pick one, some or none of them
but really I'm walking away heartened by the commitment
for high level engagement on these questions.
-: All right, thanks Aaron.
And there was sort of a multitude of questions ourselves.
Herb is going to answer.
I'm going to one of those, but to Aaron's point
it's somewhere like the fab but some or for others,
in the next couple of minutes,
and then we'll wrap up the session with the understanding
that two things will happen on the outcome
or calling a meeting.
One, perhaps or any questions that weren't answered
or ask us to go forward to IOUs
that way you can see them and then provide written response,
and also that sounds like it'd be a follow on meeting,
for the groups and IOUs to discuss these issues.
-: Vance, this is Batjer,
if I may ask a quick question.
-: Of course President Batjer.
-: Thank you, both Andy and Aaron talked about the meeting
and you all getting together with the IOUs,
senior leadership, I think that's all terrific
but you also talked about coming back to us
and reporting back to us on the learnings
and what you had perhaps agreed to.
I would really welcome that,
I know my fellow Commissioners would as well.
So that would be very, very helpful for us to hear
and be that better informed on some of these
really important questions like expanding greatly
and more specifically into the people of need
and the numbers that need to increase.
We have been very worried about it
and have voiced it almost every opportunity we could
particularly in the backup battery and other types of things
that need to be done.
So people that have medical needs
and financial needs are not left literally with nothing,
no electricity and we also have to worry about
no telecommunications also.
So I look forward to you reporting back
after you have your meetings and to Andy's point,
I think it was Andy, perhaps it was Aaron
that it needs to happen before the end of May.
So if there are things we can institute
before the height of the fire season,
that would be very helpful,
and as chief Porter said this morning,
we're very concerned about this upcoming fire season,
we are in drought conditions,
severe drought conditions throughout much of the state now,
we don't have the snow pack we need
and there's a lot of fuel.
So anyway, I would really welcome hearing back from you
after your meeting.
-: Can I just say something quickly in response
to President Batjer?
I hope I'm pronouncing your name right.
I just wanna thank you for your comments
and for understanding the importance of this issue.
If there's a meta-message that I hope you
and your fellow Commissioners can take away today,
is that access and functional needs issues
are not small issues,
they're not niche issues and they're growing in importance
as the whole issue of wildfires is growing
in importance in California.
And that if we get these issues right,
it's gonna help the whole state be better prepared.
These issues again, if we think them through
and get them right, they benefit the whole population.
Any of us can experience an accident,
a functional need, an access need in any circumstance.
So if we think this through,
it's gonna benefit the whole population,
and that's why we keep looking for a higher level
of leadership on these issues.
But thank you very much, President Batjer
for your leadership.
-: Thanks Andy.
We all need to do more, we all believe that.
-: And this is David Van Dyken,
we have five minutes left, so if anybody from our panel
or the IOUs wanna make any final thoughts or statements
or if any of our CPUC Commissioners have any last thoughts
or questions.
-: Let's leave it open for a minute,
and then I've got a comment but I wanna wait
and see if anybody has anything in summary.
-: President Batjer, David, this is Genevieve.
I didn't wanna have too many as well but you know,
the Low Income Oversight Board back in June,
a year ago, June, 2020, did receive an update
at that point in time about the efforts being made
by the utilities for the AFN customers,
and we heard a little bit about the non-English speakers
and also the use of community-based organizations.
I think there was some mention of that,
but if anybody wants to amplify on that as well
for older adults, for low-income people
with physical developmental, financial disabilities,
again, any partnerships with community-based organizations
to really amplify the work needs.
-: Commissioner Shiroma, this is Vanessa Bryan with PG&E,
thank you for that question.
I will tell you that from a PG&E perspective,
we've partnered with five in language CBOs
to deliver communications to customers
in indigenous languages before,
during and after PSPS events.
We've also partnered with a number
of multicultural media groups that can push our message out
in up to 13 different languages.
So we recognized that that is definitely an opportunity,
we provide them with social media posts
that they they're ready to go,
they simply download them and they can post them,
there in language, they're specific to the PSPS events
so we can help broaden the message
to individuals where English isn't a primary language.
In addition, PG&E just this week has launched the capability
for customers to select any of the 16 languages
that we offer our notifications in when they log into
their account or when they call the contact center.
And so they can identify that they would like
to receive their notifications specifically
in those languages that we have identified
as prevalent based on the previous rulings.
And the other part that I'd love to touch on is related
to our low income customers.
Aaron, you asked how many people we actually helped
or how many people we actually served
that had medical needs.
In 2020, we were able to deliver over 30,000
food replacement boxes following PSPS events
and that was really for the zip codes that were impacted,
where we know that there were low-income customers
who losing their food is highly impactful
and replacement of that food immediately is more important
than potentially trying to process a claim
or something of that nature.
So we recognized that this was the best way
to get the food back in the hands
of those individuals who need it.
In relation to Medical Baseline customers,
our customers reliant on power for medical needs,
we know that in conjunction with
the California Foundation for Independent Living Centers
and their disability, disaster access and resources program
that they engaged with over 4,500 customers.
They're making proactive calls
to individuals they know already have a plan,
they're also responding to calls.
And so from an escalation perspective
and I think I speak for all the IOUs we haven't a process
by which to escalate inquiries
that come in through our contact centers during PSPS events,
where there's a request for additional assistance,
and then we can engage with our CBOs accordingly.
And that's why that CBO liaison position is really important
during our PSPS events and we've been talking about that
on our joint IOU calls that we have weekly
that I have with Danielle and Jessica.
So certainly we've been able to assist people
but to your point, there is far more to do,
I think we're really in our infancy in what we've been able
to provide and who we've been able to partner with,
and so your continuous feedback is important,
and we haven't mentioned everything in our reports
that we issue because we are still working through some
of that feedback and developing what that program would be,
we would hate to come out with something
that isn't completely fleshed out and that isn't going to be
the right solution for our customers
and while all maintaining being good stewards of the dollar,
when we think about how we're providing this
to our customers and the cost.
So certainly we do not want to,
we wanna make sure that we are managing against risk
and that we are providing the resources
to the individuals who need it,
but we also wanna be really mindful
about how we're developing what those solutions are
and so your continued partnership with all the panelists
that we do engage with
in several different fora is appreciated
and we hope that it continues.
-: Vance and David,
I have a question to, a follow up question of Vanessa,
if I may please.
I know we're very short on time now.
-: Thank you President Batjer. -: Thank you.
You've just raised something very important, Vanessa.
We hear continually in our public comment period from people
that have had difficulty escalating it,
they don't, if they try and call, they can't get through,
they have great needs like now,
and they have a very hard time understanding
how to escalate their question.
And we have had this from all the IOUs
or complaints, concerns about all the IOUs.
So I would, no question there but I would really underscore
to all of you that your escalation from your complaint
or from a customer calling that needs assistance,
really, I would streamline that,
I would get that down to a science,
I would let your CBO partners know what you're doing,
because this is a very strong complaint
and people have gotten days with no answers,
days without electricity and no answers.
So I would say if you don't have an escalation plan,
please put one in gear and if you have one, make it good.
So, thank you.
-: All right, I just wanna say in closing,
I know we're already two minutes over.
Talk, appreciate it hearing, you know,
that was like a progress gets reported on.
I tried to say it reminded me a little bit about,
yeah, many months ago, my daughters
and I went to an art gallery,
we're looking at a piece of art,
which if you look at it from one side is blue,
if you look it from the opposite side it's red.
I started on the middle and watched them debate each other
over what color that that stop painting was
and I think we're looking at this issue
and we are all committed to the issue,
but what I fear is a lot of concern
that outcomes aren't there yet, that there are still gaps,
but there still needs to be in on that.
And so I think a follow on meeting,
but it was already agreed to is a wonderful way
to put some solutions on that, right?
Because if you think it's blue and that's great progress
and somebody else sees red and that's a major gap,
I think getting together and really having a discussion
is the only way that we'll land on
how do we really get to where we've been.
So I think they're on for the commitment to get there.
I'd probably report out what's your next steps
that will absolutely be reported back to probably CPUC,
President Batjer and we'll thank everyone
from that close out.
-: All right, this is David again,
I want to thank definitely all of our AFN panelists,
all of the representatives from the IOU,
think we have a good question and answer session today
and we'll be following up with the IOUs
and the panelists to help facilitate that follow-up meeting.
So with that, if there's no last burning questions
from any of our Commissioners,
I'll hand it over to our next channel,
which is on local tribal governments.
-: Thank you very much, David.
And I wanna add my voice to yours as well,
thanking all of the AFN and panelists for your rich
and good and helpful questions,
and I know you had many you were not able to get to
and I hope that those will be able to be asked and answered
in your future follow-up meetings.
I also wanna thank the utilities who joined
and listened in, very important.
I made a couple calls here companies
to make sure that happened today and I appreciate
that you answered that call.
So thank you very much, everyone.
Thank my fellow Commissioners as well,
and as you said, David, we are going to now move on
to our second panel of the day which is local government
and tribes round table.
We'll give everyone a few minutes to organize,
and of course, Stephanie Green
from the California Public Utilities Commission
will be our moderator and I don't see you on yet, Stephanie
but I'm sure you're joining in.
There you are, there you are, good.
I'm gonna turn it over to you now, Stephanie.
Oh, we can't hear you,
there's no audio, can't hear.
Nope, still no audio, still can't, nope.
You may have muted your computer.
-: Let me check.
-: Okay, now I can hear your voice.
I can hear you.
-: Okay, can you hear me now? -: Yes.
-: Okay, perfect.
I'm just gonna wait.
I don't know, Robert can you let me see
if the other panelist are on?
They should start to be showing
-: Hi Stephanie, it's Robert Stanford,
just to confirm they are active.
-: It was Lynda, Doug, Steven, Keith.
So they're all here.
There we go, okay.
Well hello everyone,
we're already running a few minutes late,
so let's get started.
I am Stephanie Green, I oversee the Commission's business
and community outreach office.
And I would like to welcome our panelists
for the next session,
which will include our steamed representatives
from local government and the community.
We have Lynda Hopkins from Sonoma County Supervisor.
We should have Doug Teeter who is Dubuque County supervisor.
Steve Crowder, who's the mayor of Paradise.
Keith Mashburn who's the mayor of Simi Valley,
Masis Hagobian, Governmental Relations Analyst
for Santa Clarita,
Joshua Saxon, he is the executive director
for the Karuk Tribe and Bill York, who is the president
and CEO of 2-1-1 San Diego.
Those are our panelists.
We will also be joined by our utility representatives,
that is Aaron Johnson, the DP of Wildfire Safety
and Public Engagement for PG&E,
Michael Huynh, Senior Advisor and Local Public Affairs
for Southern California Edison,
Amy Olson, who is Senior Advisor
of Local Government and Native American Tribes
for Southern California Edison,
and Jennifer Summers who is the Director of Tribal Relations
and Land Services for San Diego Gas and Electric,
and then we have Todd Andrews,
who's Regional Business Manager for PacifiCorp
and Justin Bukartek
who is Director of Emergency Management for PacifiCorp.
And those are our panelists today and then the utility reps.
So I would like to start off our session today
by asking each of our panelists
if they could tell us about their community
and how Public Safety Power Shutoffs
have impacted their community
and what their top state public safety concerns are.
I'd like to start with Supervisor Hopkins.
Supervisor Hopkins, can you give us just a couple of minutes
to talk about PSPS in your community?
-: Yes, thank you so much, Stephanie, can you hear me?
-: I can hear you, thank you.
-: Perfect.
-: Well, I'd like to start off first by saying
that we have come a long way since we first started off
on this Public Safety Power Shutoff journey
and I do wanna thank PG&E for the improvements
that we have made thus far.
I recall a day in the not so distant past
when Sonoma County was actually the first County
in the state of California to send a representative
down to PG&E's emergency operations center,
where she was promptly placed in an empty conference room
and was literally walled off from information
as well as decisions.
I think this was the same incident when the PG&E website
also crashed repeatedly in the run-up to a PSPS,
which meant that we had a lot of confused
and concerned constituents in Sonoma County.
We have come a long way and I really do wanna say
that we receive more information earlier
and more frequently from PG&E staff now
as we go into PSPS events,
which I really, really appreciate.
Notably PG&E has also improved its website
with real-time mapping from members of the public
and we haven't had those technology issues
or crashes in our recent events.
At the same time, there are still some improvements
that need to be made, I want to acknowledge
that community resource center implementation
has seemed to be sporadic
and we've actually had to advocate politically
in order to receive community resource centers,
particularly in vulnerable, disadvantaged,
low and at risk communities, low income communities as well.
In some cases, we actually had to stand up
our own community resource centers
and we're left to pick up the tab on the taxpayer's dime.
Similarly, we do continue
to extend a substantial amount of taxpayer resources,
reaching out to our vulnerable community residents
a.k.a those Medical Baseline customers
in order to ensure that they don't fall through the cracks.
This work takes place
through our health and human services department.
And I know that you've already spent some time on access
and functional needs this morning,
so I won't go into that in too great detail,
but if there's one thing that I can impress upon all of you
that I think we really need to devote more attention to,
it's emergency communications infrastructure.
During the Kincade Fire which was anticipated
to burn through tens of thousands of homes
and not stop burning until it hits the Pacific ocean,
CAL FIRE and the sheriff actually proactively evacuated
tens of thousands of residents early
because they knew that we would be losing power
and because they knew that without power
in terrain already lacking
in redundant communications infrastructure,
they would have no way of communicating with constituents.
I also wanna, you know, I think it's important to remember
that of course fires start for other reasons
than PG&E, we obviously suffered
through the lightning complex last year,
but PSPS is an emergency on its own
and it requires a local government response,
but what's worse about it
is that it actually is an emergency that limits our ability
to respond to other emergencies in real time.
So during the Kincaid for instance,
I had fire departments that only had access
to radio communications and we can't rely on analog anymore,
it's a digital world and firefighting increasingly relies
on higher tech infrastructure and database communication,
so they can actually coordinate in real time,
you know, where the fire is, where even the folks are,
they actually now have an ability
to track firefighters and engines
as they move around the fire front
and so that access to data is really, really critical,
especially for our fire stations.
I also had communities where unfortunately, people stayed,
they got lucky this time and they didn't burn,
but had the fire gone through,
we really would have been limited
in our communications infrastructure to respond.
I also wanna add one other technicality,
which is that we have a lot
of small municipal water districts.
Those water districts rely on power to pump water,
which then ultimately supplies the community with water
during a fire events and not all of them have backup systems
or not all of them have backup systems
that are of the level that would be required
in a wild fire response.
So just one last question,
which is really not just for the IOUs or for the CPUC,
but for the entire state of California,
how can we facilitate nonpolluting,
non-greenhouse gas emitting,
backup sources of power for critical infrastructure.
And also how can we ensure that perpetual disaster response
doesn't bankrupt local government,
because right now we still are left picking up the tab
for a lot of the response for these PSPSs
and it's not just that, then it's also a pandemic,
it's also fire, it's also flood season.
And so it really starts to impact our ability
to deliver critical services to our constituents.
Thank you so much for the opportunity
to spend a few minutes speaking with you today
and thank you so much
for your time and attention on this matter.
-: Thank you Supervisor Hopkins.
Supervisors Peter, would you like to go next?
-: Oh yeah, thank you very much
and it's first I should ask, can you hear me?
-: Yes we can, thank you. -: Okay.
You never know, you start yapping
and then you never get connected and my video didn't work
so I apologize but I have a face for radio.
It's always great to follow Supervisor Lynda Hopkins
because I can just replace the names of the locations
and say, ditto as folks may know,
Butte County is a little above Sacramento,
we're about 219,000 in population,
16% based on the current census data is in poverty,
about a third of the county
is in very high fire hazard areas
and my guesstimate would be about half the county
has been affected by PSPS.
Major events have come to Butte County, the Oroville Dam,
although that was kind of in the winter months,
that resulted in 188,000 that were reported evacuated
and, you know, it's uncertain
when such large infrastructure failures could occur,
but imagine trying to evacuate that amount of people
in a PSPS event, campfire for those that know,
142,000 acres, 19,000 structures,
I know Mayor Crowder's on the phone,
he lost his house, I lost my house in that
as well as many of our residents,
and then last year we had the North complex fire
of about 319,000 acres and a lot of 2,400 structures.
I would say probably, some of the struggles with PSPS,
some reason our jail,
the county jail in Oroville got cut off for 24 hours,
lift stations for the sewage
and potable water ceased in that,
so that was quite a surprise, it's safe to say that they,
PG&E has restructured how power is delivered to that,
so we haven't had an event like that again,
but that was a shock,
a lot of our citizens live in remote areas
and they rely on Wi-Fi in place of spotty cell phone,
and so when you lose power, they lose the internet
and the result is authorities unable to contact citizens
in those areas.
A PSPS was scheduled prior to the campfire,
but the line that caused the fire I've been informed,
wasn't going to be included in that shutoff.
Some of the concerns is, it's in the news,
U.S. District Judge, William ALSUP may force more shutoffs.
And one article I read said Butte County
could expect a doubling of PSPS,
so I think it's hard to quantify the effect PSPS has
on my district, which includes Paradise Magalia
that was pretty much destroyed by the campfire,
but I would guess it causes a lot of people
to have concerns about rebuilding,
especially those near or at the poverty line,
they can't afford generators and also business development,
it's challenging for businesses
to have to count on generators to do their business
and I really feel that folks are choosing to go elsewhere
instead of rebuilding in our communities.
I'd say my top safety priority is emergency notification
and then hazard fuel reduction near power lines,
and the appreciate being on the panel today.
-: Thank you so much,
and let's move to kind of Mayor Crowder.
Is Mayor Steve Crowder on the line?
Okay, well, we'll come back.
Is that Mayor Crowder.
I'm going to move on and lets go to Mayor Mashburn.
-: Good afternoon.
First, I'd like to give a little bit of an introduction
and thank you for inviting me to be on this panel.
I'm the elected mayor of a city of 126,000 people
at Simi Valley just North of Los Angeles County
and I am a former Ventura County Fire Battalion Chief
and the last 10 years served as the Chief Fire Investigator
for the County of Ventura.
In 2020, we had six PSPS events
and they lasted 24 to 72 hours.
And in case you're not familiar with much,
unlike those that have already spoken,
our city is very urbanized, we are not in wild land area.
We have some outline areas that are wildfire areas.
However, the city proper has very, very little exposure
to actual wild land fires.
So in our case, public safety public or power shutoffs
are anything but public safety,
it's just quite the opposite.
The most dangerous aspect of the PSPS events
for our city has been it shuts down the traffic signals
throughout the city, and these are in areas once again,
that are not anywhere near any wild land areas
and yet we're told over and over again
that this is gonna prevent wild land fires.
And the potential loss for life due to traffic collisions
is absolutely astonishing in our city
and we have claims and we expecting more claims
for the many traffic accidents that were caused
by the lack of powered traffic signals.
It appears to us that Edison transferred
their wildfire liability in a different form to the cities,
businesses and the residents they serve
because there certainly is no fire threat here.
One of the difficulties that we have as a city
is we have to run out and do some kind of notification
in these intersections
that there actually is an intersection here
and it's normally controlled
and we place temporary stop signs
and A-frame to what have you.
But the law indicates that once we put up
any type of notification, we take on the liability,
and that liability, I believe, should be the liability
of the power company
because they're the ones that turned off the power
and eliminated the use of those intersections.
And then again, the cost that comes to the city,
we've as a council have authorized the purchase
and the installation of 50 and that's not even,
I think we have over 70 intersections,
so 50 of them and the cost is gonna be over $600,000
to put a temporary battery backups.
And again, in these times of COVID pandemics
and economic difficulties, it's a hard pill to swallow,
they have to come up with that kind of money,
but then on the other hand,
we are here to protect the people.
One of the, or two of the circuits
actually serve the city hall that I'm in right now,
and these are shut down, City Hall and our senior center
is nowhere near a wild land area,
but we routinely lose power
and areas that we've set up to help our vulnerable people,
cooling centers, food, prep, that type of thing
is no longer in use because of the lack of power.
So at the cost of $850,000
we're researching the purchase of generators
to back up the system
because we simply cannot rely on a constant source
from the power provider,
again, the senior center and the public library,
our cooling centers during extreme weather events,
and again, in fact, one of them was borrowed by Edison
to use for one of their resource centers
and then they found, oh, we can't use it,
you don't have it power, so it just spread widespread.
The city anticipates, our city Simi Valley anticipate
spending $1.45 million just to accommodate SCE's PSPS events
and that's a very large hit to our city.
Of course, I can go into great detail
about what it does for the food that the company would say,
okay, we'll give nonperishable food back to the citizens,
well the citizens have already lost
all their perishable foods
because of a lack of refrigeration
and it hardly is a substitute for what they had
and the company giving nondescript foods
for those who need special diets and what have you,
it's just not a good replacement program.
I heard one of the supervisors talk about the water
and we have our own water district,
and again, it's at a very high cost
that we have to send people out with generators
and to continuously provide power
to get the water service back,
that is lost because of the PSPS event.
Our public works cost alone is $175,000,
and that's in 2021 alone.
So I think, I don't wanna echo what the others have said
about the need of our medical customers,
people that rely on power to keep medical devices going
and the response times and the number of staff
that have to deal with these people,
and I heard others that said
the communications has been very lacking
and inaccurate is the best way to put it.
People will call and say,
when are we gonna get our power back on?
It'll be on tomorrow at two,
and it turns out it's three days later,
far beyond or maybe just the opposite in some cases
where you're not gonna have power for 48 hours
and three, four hours later, boom, you have power
after they started making all of these arrangements
to go elsewhere and to obtain housing.
The improvements made,
there have been some improvements on our circuits,
there has been some areas
where they've reduced the number of residents impacted
and we see that as a very good thing,
and as we reviewed the different circuits,
I always come back to when I was a fire investigator,
we had a program that we worked side-by-side with Edison
in the same vehicles and we went out and walked the circuits
and we inspected them, inspecting them for treeline contacts
too close to Russian and what have you.
And when we'd discover something, it was a phone call away
that the individuals that worked for Edison would call
and before we would leave the scene
of where this troublesome area was,
there would be tree-trimming trucks they're fixing it.
So it wasn't like we were needing to write violations,
we would just write notice of violation
and we would do that together hand in hand,
and it was just a document,
the areas that we actually worked on and so having,
I retired in '05 and I've lived in Simi Valley all my life,
I've never seen the need for PSPS in this extreme manner
that's being used now and that I can only attribute
to the SCE and the fire department, local fire department,
Ventura County fire work together,
put teams together and went out and surveyed those lines
and made the corrections needed,
and so it was a very, very strong prevention program
rather than just throw a switch, shut the power off.
I do have a couple of questions, I'll try being very brief.
We're told that there's gonna be many more insulated lines,
which are very good,
but we wanna know where those lines are being insulated,
where the conductors are being switched
to the insulated conductors because in our urban city,
that's of no value, because of the insulated conductors
being put in where we have a real quick reaction
to any problems is not helpful to not only the citizens
but it's also not helping SCE either,
so we would like to verify that the insulated lines
are going in where it will protect the system
in the wild land areas,
which is exactly what they've been trying to accomplish,
and so we wanna see how that's coming along
and what rate of replacement it will be,
and I think that that's it for this time,
I think I share with the others the same problems,
obviously we're quite a bit different
because we don't live in the beautiful wild land areas
of California, like so many do.
Here in Simi Valley, we just we've been taken a real beating
from the PSPS events and would like to see
some type of relief, so thank you.
-: Thank you Mayor, I think Mayor Crowder is on the line now,
so we could go back to him
and then we'll go to Mr. Hagopian next but first,
Mayor Crowder, are you on the line?
Okay, seems like we may still be having some technical,
so let's go to Mr. Hagopian, Mr. Hagopian?
-: Thank you, Stephanie.
Good afternoon, President Batjer and Commissioners
and Masis Hagobian, Intergovernmental Relations
with the city of Santa Clarita,
I'd like to first just thank the Commission and staff
for holding this very important workshop today
and for the increased attention
on this matter these past few months,
Santa Clarita is the third most populous city
in Los Angeles County and it's home
to approximately 225,000 residents.
We are located in Northern Los Angeles County
between the Northern and Southern sections
of the Angeles National Forest, and directly west
of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument.
In addition to those living in the city,
there are approximately 70,000 residents
in adjacent unincorporated areas of the San Clarita Valley.
Many of those living and working in the San Clarita Valley
have experienced several PSPS events,
sometimes even during the evacuation orders
due to the threat of active wildfires.
Fire disruptions have become a more frequent burden
as the use of PSPS events
have become year round in Santa Clarita.
An even greater concern has been the de-energization events
during evacuation orders, which has placed many residents
in severe danger as a lack of electricity
has resulted in significant barriers to access the internet,
cellular and landline service to stay up-to-date
with evacuation orders and wildfire conditions.
In 2019 alone, San Clarita experienced approximately
seven days of CSPs events with the de-energization
of more than seven circuits in the city.
On one given day in October of 2019,
over 10,500 households in the city
experienced a power disruption due to a PSPS event
with an estimated average duration of just over 24 hours.
We are still waiting on aggregate data for last year,
however, on Christmas Eve and Christmas day in 2020,
over 25,000 households and businesses experienced power loss
during a PSPS event that lasted over 24 consecutive hours.
We have been in constant discussions with representatives
of Southern California Edison,
which we are very appreciative of on their plans
to harden their grid
and reduce the frequency of PSPS events.
So our interests now is ensure that Edison follows through
on their promise to rate payers in the Santa Crita Valley
and implement immediate grid hardening this year.
And with that being said, in our most recent meeting
with representatives of Southern California Edison,
they actually presented an immediate grid hardening plan
to our mayor and mayor pro-tem just last week,
in that presentation, we were encouraged
to see that they've identified nine circuits
that have been hit the hardest in the last three years,
essentially defined as experiencing four or more PSPS events
during that timeframe with plans to harden all nine circuits
by September of this year.
So our focus now is really to hold them to that,
to continue to provide updates to our residents
and to our businesses here in the city
and the surrounding valley,
to ensure that those hardening plans are implemented
in a timely manner before we experience Santa Ana winds
come fall of 2021.
With that again, I just wanna express our appreciation
for your attention on this matter
and we look forward to the discussion today, thank you.
-: Thank you and let's go to Mr. Saxon next.
-: Hi Green, can you all hear me?
-: Yes we can, thank you.
-: Fantastic, hello,
California Public Utilities Commissioners,
IOU representatives, fellow panelists
and members of the public, my name is Joshua Saxon,
Machado member, previous Tribal Council member
and currently serving my tribal government and community
as the executive director of the Karuk Tribe.
The Karuk Tribe provides tribal government oversight
and services in three world communities
within our ancestral lands,
Orleans, which is in far Northeastern Humboldt County,
Happy camp, which is in Western Siskiyou County
and my Rica and central Siskiyou County.
Siskiyou County communities IOU is PacifiCorp.
Our Humboldt County communities IOU
is Pacific Gas and Electric.
How these IOUs have responded
to the wind related fire events
of the past several years are vastly different.
PG&E took on the challenge of PSPS
by treating the Karuk Tribe and all California tribes
with the same level of respect and inclusion
as cities, counties and state agencies.
We were invited, briefed and debriefed
with the same information
that other agencies were receiving in real time.
I can't thank enough the ongoing commitment and availability
of the PG&E team, especially Reno Franklin,
who has gone above and beyond to ensure the Karuk tribe
sits at the table while decisions are being made
that affect our communities and the government operations
that those communities rely upon.
Unfortunately, this has not been the case with PacifiCorp.
On September 8, 2020,
the Slater Fire completely devastated
the community of Happy Camp,
where the Karuk Tribes headquarters is located.
The fire destroyed over 200 homes,
including approximately 44 tribally affiliated homes.
The fire burns so fast and intensely
the majority of families
were only able to escape with their lives.
Fortunately, the Karuk Tribe was able
to utilize COVID-19 care funding
to provide emergency shelter to over 100 families
during this ongoing disaster recovery.
Where was PacifiCorp before the fire devastated Happy Camp,
and more importantly, where were they right after
the community of Happy Camp
was left burnt and helpless.
In the wake of this disaster, it has become very evident,
PacifiCorp must fundamentally change
the way they do business in the big climate region.
PG&E has prioritized tribal governments
as partners in the PSPS system, beginning with notifications
and ending with after action reviews.
We expect and demand the same kind of partnership
with PacifiCorp moving forward.
I would like to see a firm commitment
on the part of PacifiCorp today
to establish formal lines of communications
in line with those we have with PG&E,
so that our tribe could make a positive report
back to the CPUC and say,
this is how things have changed for the better.
Our expectation is that PacifiCorp
will be reaching out to PG&E and the Karuk Tribe soon
to set up similar communication structures as PG&E has
that will enhance public safety
and ensure a much needed partnership is being cultivated
with an IOU that services,
that maintained services in our sovereign territory.
My contact information is jaysaxon@cutter.us.
My phone number 5304931600, extension 2037, thank you.
-: Thank you.
Next let's go to Mr. York from San Diego 2-1-1.
-: Good afternoon, again, my name is Billy York,
I'm the president and CEO
of 2-1-1 San Diego Imperial counties.
Thank you for having me today
representing at least in San Diego,
some of our community-based organization
and the role of 2-1-1, so I thank you the Commissioners
and the Public Utility Commission for hosting us.
It's 2-1-1 where we're thankful to the Commission
because you actually gave us 2-1-1 in San Diego
approved in the line of San Diego in 2004, the dialing code
and we've been at 2-1-1 since 2005
when we started the launch and took our first call.
A little bit about us is,
I don't do any presentation where I do,
you know, I realized that
although we've been mentioned several times today,
and we're part of and a lot of people's tongues
with different things,
whether it's COVID or social services,
a lot of people don't know what 2-1-1 is
and where it came from.
So just a little preface to that is 2-1-1 came on the scene
in 2000 after the FCC approved the dialing code,
and in California, that started spreading quickly
after 2000, us receiving the dialing code in 2005,
so we've had about 16 years of doing information referral.
At the core of what we do,
we connect to community resources, individuals,
citizens to information
around community-based organizations,
government benefit programs and disaster.
It was quickly after 9/11 that the FCC and others,
the Brookings Institute realized
that there were over 200 numbers set up in New York and DC.
That was the exact quote was haphazard and disorganized
for 800 numbers to find information around and post-9/11.
So in Connecticut, D.C. and New York,
and so there was a lot of reports and actually research done
that 2-1-1 could be used in a disaster support
to really pull off those calls off,
100 numbers and easy to remember dialing code,
but also in disaster to the non-emergency life-threatening.
And so we played that role since 2006.
In 2006, San Diego County saw the opportunity
to leverage 2-1-1 that was again, taking off here
and growing in size and scale to be able to offer services,
but also to look at the fire threat
that here in the wildfire and in 2007, we were first tested,
so we have a relationship directly with San Diego County
as early as, again in 2006, tested in 2007, by the way,
that's why I started here as a volunteer at 2-1-1,
and you know, trial by fire,
I came in the second day and I've been here ever since.
So it's interesting that I'm speaking to you now about PSPS
when our disaster resume
and the way that we're used in San Diego
is just a little bit different than some of the other 2-1-1
that were completely embedded
in our San Diego County infrastructure,
office of emergency services and all being a nonprofit,
which is one of the requirements of a 2-1-1
is it's run by a nonprofit.
And so being embedded in our office of emergency services,
having relationships and information
providing from not only our IOU, the SDG&E but our county,
CAL FIRE and other state entities that we have
that valid up-to-date vetted information.
So every day we're providing social service referrals
to community-based organizations,
working with 1200 partners and 6,000 resources,
and then during fire disaster PSPS,
you do a COVID where we launched
into a whole nother realm of possibilities,
and I think that's what we've done here
around energy assistance,
again, a partnership that goes back with SDG&E for 16 years,
again, connecting our citizens to support mechanisms
around the California air rates
for energy screening and rolling,
we're actually on the back of the bill
for SDG&E bill here in San Diego
to know when to call for information around the bill
or information around customer service
or relaying back to SDG&E.
So we're embedded in sort of the infrastructure
of our utility assistance provider.
And with that, we became better understanding
with better understanding of FERA care.
Again, all of the fire related things you can imagine
and each time we get launched, we learn more.
Our disaster resume is extensive and our partnerships
to both the county as well as SDG&E are strong.
So, which leads us to our partnership around PSPS.
The last few years of PSPS was rolled out,
we realized speaking to millions of people over the years
around what power shutoffs look like,
what fire safety looks like,
and all of the things that happen in wildfire
and that mitigation.
And so we have been delivering that type of service
to our clients for a long time, our citizens.
So PSPS was really the next partnership,
so from a community-based organization,
working with community based organizations, government IOUs,
like SDG&E we've been able to deliver an additional service
in looking at protocols and process
for our power deactivation.
Again, having a voice straight
to our wildfire mitigation council
and we serve our entire region.
So we've been able to work with SDG&E and our IOU
to build a process with our CBOs,
again, with that linchpin
to a lot of our community-based organizations,
we're proud of the partnership over the last year
that we formed in our PSPS program.
Again, working with our other community-based organizations
like Jewish family services, fact, salvation army,
we've been able to do some really impactful things
in this last fire season, in the last PSPS times,
we've actually had eight activations
and we have incredible results of the impact
and what that looks like and I'm happy to share with you
at any questions as we talk more about PSPS
and what we've learned in the last few years.
Thank you.
-: Thank you and now let's circle back to Mayor Crowder.
Mayor Crowder?
-: Good afternoon, can you hear me?
-: We can see and hear you perfectly.
Thank you so much.
-: Okay, perfect, sorry about that.
Supervisor Teeter kind of took all of my thunder here,
so I'll still try to make some points here.
We're definitely not unique in the PSPS situations,
anybody else who's spoken, we are a little bit unique
is the fire that came through here,
the campfire destroyed 95% of our entire town.
We're making good progress and rebuilding.
PG&E is under grounding our entire town,
which we're extremely grateful for,
we'll be a much safer community for that.
We went from a town of 27,000 people overnight
to a town of 3000 people.
Right now we sit at five to 6,000 in population,
like everybody else, the PSPSs affect our businesses,
our medical needs residents, our regular residents.
The differences are especially our businesses are struggling
to start with the loss in population,
COVID, our restaurants which we only have a few
are just hanging on by a thread.
Every time a PSPS comes around
they're throwing out a ton of food
because they're without power for two or three days.
We're having residents that are on the fence,
do we come back and live like a third world country
or do we go somewhere else?
It's really tough for us.
Our schools, our kids are having a heck of a time,
again, COVID is impacting the in-person learning
and then when we have a PSPS,
a good part of us lose our internet, our cell service,
so our kids are falling further and further behind.
One of the biggest struggles was last year
during the Bear Fire, we faced two town evacuation warnings
while those were under a PSPS event for us.
So again, a good part of our residents had no internet,
so there was problems relaying information
from the fire anyway,
I was literally up all night fielding phone calls
from people that had the ability to get out.
It's just been a real struggle
and it is affecting our rebuild
and I guess what we need to really see is,
I'm hoping that we can get isolated off of the normal grid
as we underground because I just don't see us being able
to wait four years until this project is complete
to have these PSPSs go away
and like a supervisor Teeter had said,
then you've got a judge
that wants to double the number of them.
I mean, we're scraping and scrapping and trying to come back
but we need some help in this,
so anyway, thank you very much for listening.
-: And thank you.
Time is going much faster than I anticipated,
so what I think I'll jump to
is letting you guys have some time, you panelist
to ask some questions directly of the IOUs,
unlike the last panel AFN,
where things were sort of Statewide,
we still have a bit of a regional focus,
so what I'd like to do is maybe by IOU open it up
to some questions and we went north to south before,
so maybe we'll reverse it and go sort of Southern up.
If we have a first question
or so first San Diego Gas and Electric,
I'd like to throw that out and then we'll move to Edison.
Any questions that any of the panelists have
for San Diego Gas and Electric?
Okay, I'm not seeing--
-: Stephanie, you know, I think I'm the only San Diegon
on the call, right, so it's interesting because,
which I'm glad, happy to represent.
So I don't have any but I do think my point, I wanna make,
I don't have any direct questions for SDG&E
because we're really embedded in the PSPS process.
So and I think that's part of the point
of what my talking today was talking about,
what our process has changed and what we've seen
over the years here being the information arm
and the information on for our County
to having that dialing code.
But we, part of our PSPS partnership
is really about, that communication.
So, I mean, I get asked
what's the secret sauce is in San Diego
and it really is because we have direct line
and ongoing communication.
So anything that we have as our community-based organization
and 2-1-1 providing that service for PSPS of navigating
very complex needs in partnership
is that we have a two-way collaboration
and communication constantly.
And if PSPS launch, it is feverously communicating
right down to case-by-case basis.
So I don't have any,
but I wanted to make sure I represented San Diego
for what it looks like for us
that actually are on the side of the community
and community-based organizations once a PSPS happens
-: So, thanks.
That's really helpful and it sounds like
it's a good role model for the rest of the state
in terms of the collaboration, so thank you.
Well, I know the next area,
Southern California, Edison,
I know we definitely will have some questions coming
from some of our panelists.
So I'll open it up for those other parts
of Southern California
and Southern California Edison to address.
-: I have a question, this is Mayor Mashburn.
-: Go ahead Mayor Mashburn.
-: My first question is,
and I'm going back several years and we worked very closely
with Edison and when I was with the fire department
and all indications are they no longer do
preventative inspections of the conductors
that run through the wild land areas
and I'm wondering why that isn't the case, because it seemed
to be a very successful program when I was doing it back
in the early 2000s and we had a very close relationship
with the folks from Edison and if we look
at the history of fires, I think you would see
that those were very successful inspections
in preventing fires.
So that's a question I have is,
are you reaching out, are you trying to,
or do you meet with the local fire authorities
and actually go out and inspect?
-: Hi Stephanie, this is Larry Chan.
I just wanna take a quick moment to introduce myself
on behalf of Edison.
So I serve as the Vice President of Local Public Affairs
and I believe it's my first time in front of this body.
So I just wanna quickly introduce myself
and get to Mayor happens question,
first of all, I wanna mention
that I think many of the questions
that we've heard throughout the day
and certainly Mayor Mashburn, your question
it can certainly boil down to communication
and we've recognized kind of the hardships and impacts
that PSPS has had particularly in 2020,
and so, we are really committed
to improving our communication with our local governments
and tribal partners as well,
but just to answer your question
specifically Mayor Mashburn, and by the way,
I'm pleased to be introduced to you,
we do in fact work with our fire agencies
specifically Ventura County Fire,
and we do in fact conduct enhanced overhead inspections
of our infrastructure,
and while it may not be kind of, I think,
the partnership that you're talking about,
I do think we have an ability to communicate that better
to you and to the city and we certainly comply
with all of the enhanced mitigations for wildfire risks,
and we regularly inspect our lines,
Project Santa Ana in Ventura County is a perfect example
of that and certainly, so if that's not something
that we are communicating regular to you,
certainly committed to making sure
that communication is better
-: Yeah, no, I appreciate that
and I know there there's two sides to this.
There's the art department side
and then of course there's the SCE side
and both sides have to reach out to each other.
I just know that back in the early 2000s,
it certainly seemed to be a very successful program
and I would like to see it brought back
or see if it may be it is being done
and we're just not aware of it.
Now, our area's a little different in that
I think the circuits that are affecting our city
only go into a wild land area to a very small degree,
so it's not a big task,
like it may be in some of the other counties.
-: Yeah, I do know that there are fire management officers
are quite closely connected to the fire agencies,
so I promise you, I'm taking copious notes,
and I can make sure
that we are communicating a little bit better
with you in the future on that.
-: I appreciate.
And then the second question,
can we have a list of the circuits,
including location of transmission lines
that have been hardened or upgraded to the insulated lines?
So we can kind of take a look and see,
because we know the circuits that come into our city
and we know if they're coming out of a wild-land area
and that's why they're being shut off
but it has a tremendous effect on our city
and we would like to keep track of it,
so we can relay that information to the constituency,
letting them know the progress that's being made.
And there has been great progress by the way
and I commend SCE for that,
they've reduced the number of PSPS events
and they've also reduced the number of people
that it'll impact but we would like to be in a position
to have that information so we can share it
with our very interested constituency.
-: Well, Mayor Mashburn first,
I actually would like to say thank you
you know, to President Batjer,
one of your comments this morning about this panel,
sort of being an opportunity to listen and gain feedback.
I think know that's something that we take very seriously
and so we appreciate the comments and Mayor Mashburn,
if I could just use this opportunity
to highlight your question
about receiving sort of more information, more data,
I think it's a really perfect example of how we are seeking
to improve particularly in PSPS communications,
you mentioned the traffic signals in Simi Valley,
that was sort of a direct circumstance of communication
between Edison and your city
and so we are really happy to be able to mitigate
some of the PSPS impacts on the traffic signals
to make your system more resilient there,
but again, that comes because of your communication.
And so thank you for those comments,
we will continue to do that.
So the answer to your question is yes,
and I believe it was just last week we had a meeting
with the community of Simi Valley,
so we will get that information to you,
I believe we shared that with staff,
we'll certainly get that to you again,
but again, I wanted to just highlight the appreciation
for the collaboration and the feedback is welcome
and we're gonna strive to do better and do more,
so thank you.
-: Yes, no and thank you.
There is a noticeable change
and I think it'll show up as we have these new events,
that new PSPS events
and it won't be as impactful on us, that's for sure.
That's all the questions I have, thank you very much.
-: Thank you, and to San Clarita,
did you have any questions
either for Edison or any of the IOU panelists, I guess?
-: Yeah, thanks Stephanie, this is Lucy from San Clarita.
Before I deliver my question,
I did wanna just say on Mayor happens point,
we also have seen improvements
made by Southern California Edison,
specifically in regard to segmentation
during a PSPS event,
that's significantly reduced the impact of PSPS events
that we've experienced in our city,
and that's been something that we've continued
to communicate to representatives,
our regional representatives at Edison as well.
So any programs or efforts to reduce impacts
like segmentation has definitely been something
that we've encouraged.
In addition to that communication has definitely improved
not only to city officials,
both our city council and city staff
but in addition to that also rate payers
within the community as well,
I know Edison hosted a community town hall for specifically
in San Clarita Valley last week,
in addition to a meeting that they had with myself
and our mayor and mayor pro tem providing those updates.
So we definitely appreciate the increased communication
and the efforts that Edison has made recently,
just to provide updates on their plans moving forward,
but with that said, given the expedited and immediate plans
in regard to grid hardening within Santa Clarita,
my question is what are Edison's plans on providing updates
on progress these next six months in grid hardening
to the community?
-: Yeah, thanks for the question.
You know, as I mentioned earlier,
I think communication is absolutely key to all of this,
we've heard the feedback from elected officials
from our community, from this body here as well,
I believe today we've had two meetings,
as you mentioned in the Santa Clarita Valley,
as well as in Simi Valley,
we have at least 10 more meetings community scheduled
for the rest of the year
to go specifically over grid hardening measures.
I think one of the pieces of feedback that we received
that was quite helpful to us
was that there needs to be sort of an increase
in customer community communications and transparency,
and so we are striving to ensure
that when we have these meetings,
the decision making process, improving communications
and notifications and then actually
on the back end enhancing post event reporting
is also something that we're trying to focus on,
and so, as I think we had some staff members
from the PSPS attend last week,
making sure that we're communicating things like
in the Santa Clarita Valley, for example,
assuming similar conditions is 2020,
we expect, 68% reduction,
actually, I'm sorry, an 81% reduction
in customer outage time due to PSPS
across the frequently impacted circuits,
communicating to the city what circuits are impacted,
what the mitigation measures are going to be
and just really just education
about when impacts are going to occur
and then also cleaning up the notifications as well,
so those are all specifics around grid hardening
that we wanna continue to educate the community on
and as I mentioned, at least planning
on having a 10 more this year.
I'll also, I wanna take a moment,
I didn't recognize my team members on the call,
we do have Michael Quinn,
who is our local public affairs lead for PSPS,
as well as Amy Olson, who is our tribal engagement lead.
So certainly, please feel free to jump in
if I've missed anything or if you have follow-up questions.
-: There was one additional question
that Santa Clarita had on 2020 PSPS data,
including the number of households and businesses impacted
by a PSPS event and the number of total hours and residents
or businesses owners have experienced in a PSPS event.
Apparently that data had been requested
and they have not received it.
-: Yeah and let me, this is Masis Hagobian of San Clarita,
let me add to that.
This has been brought up several different times
and my understanding right now
is our regional representatives at Edison are working
on aggregating that data for us,
so that's the update there,
we're gonna hang tight right now,
but that is definitely information that we'd like
to see sooner than later as we continue to strategize
and try to provide support to our residents
and our businesses and with the best effort moving forward.
Thank you.
-: And I've taken note of that just now,
happy to follow up with you afterwards
to make sure we're getting you that data.
-: Okay, thank you. -: Excellent.
Are there any other questions for Edison directly?
I've noted here that we have several tribal leads
on the line and so I'm just wondering
if Mr. Saxon has any specific questions
for either the Tribal Lead or PacifiCorp.
-: Yeah, pretty simple.
Is there anyone from PacifiCorp on this call?
Todd: Yeah, I'm Todd Andrews,
I'm right here and I heard your contact information,
I'm looking forward to reaching out to you
and setting up a meeting.
I've had the joy of working with Scott Steinbrink
on our wildfire council and talk to them
about resiliency measures programs that we have
and I look forward to working with you also.
-: What was your name again, I'm sorry?
Todd: Todd Andrew.
And I'll be in the Lyrica actually tomorrow
and I can reach out to you at that time,
let's say at that time too.
-: And what is your title at PacifiCorp,
what are you doing?
Todd: I am the regional business manager,
so I represent the Siskiyou County, Modoc County,
little small parts of Shasta County
and then some areas up in Oregon also.
-: Does PacifiCorp have a Tribal Liaison?
-: I am not aware of that at this time
but there are senior executives
on the call today too listening
and it's something that we'll definitely bring up to them.
-: We would appreciate that.
Todd: Thanks.
-: Director Sachs, my name is Justin Bukartek
I'm the director of Emergency Management for PacifiCorp.
I've been with the company for all the months
I apologize that I'm not in a position to speak
on past experiences but that being said,
I was brought in to address gaps and unmet needs,
particularly regarding our emergency preparedness
and response initiative,
so my highest priority coming in is to address
and improve our PSPS operations in regards
to how we can better serve our local partners
and communities like yours
during the planning and execution of such an event.
So I also look forward to working with you
in your community in the future.
-: I appreciate that, definitely.
and it's not just me, I mean, we as the tribe,
we have multiple departments, multiple directors,
that also are impacted by PSPS and so it's very important
that as information sharing happens
and that partnership is built, that I also I'm able
to connect you with our regional folks
in Happy Camp on Marietta
that will be impacted as it will need
to be part of that communication stream.
So it's very important
that we're behind the eight ball and we need
to move forward fairly quickly,
especially with the fire season approaching and wind events.
It's already, I can look outside,
I can see the wind blowing,
it's not too bad but the sooner the better, thank you.
-: Commissioner Rechtschaffen and I thought
you were going to add something.
-: Thank you, Just the follow-up,
I was just gonna ask Justin or Todd,
if they could follow up with us because it sounds like
from what Josh is saying, that there's been no lines
of communication between PacifiCorp and the Karuk,
and he has no idea what your positions are,
which is disturbing.
I think we'd be interested to learn what types
of communication have PacifiCorp engaged in in the past.
I had enough with Justin and Todd had said,
you're only there a month, so may not be,
you may not have the history,
but we'd certainly be interested
in hearing more of that history.
-: Yeah, thank you for giving me an opportunity
to talk a little bit about this.
So I was brought in to the territory
after a well-deserved retirement in March, 2020
and that's when I started to take on the area
of Siskiyou County and MODEC County
and earlier today we talked about challenges.
I think COVID has created some challenges
of slightly strong lines of communication,
but recently I have been able to find some contacts
with the Karuk Tribe and it started to begin
to build on that and I'm looking forward to build
that even stronger
-: Thank you.
Okay, why don't we turn to PG&E?
And if there's any questions of PG&E
coming from Northern California?
Supervisors Hopkins, or tutor or mayor Prada.
-: Hi, this is a Supervisor Deck Teeter.
You know, I think, you know what I didn't cover it
in the opening statement is we've seen improvements
like with that jail PG&E rerouted wires,
pre-notification has improved to,
in some cases down to two day notification,
we've had a microgrid created in Magalia
and that is like connecting a grocery store gas station,
a rite aid, a fire station, a sheriff substation, cell tower
and the community water provider
and I've heard there's plans to connect
to the new underground area in the Magalia
and I think question-wise for PG&E,
our jail has permanent generators that were only designed
to operate for short periods,
we're renting other generators and switch back and forth,
as you could imagine with having so many disasters
in our county, our budget is challenged
and financial assistance
to fix a more permanent generator solution
would be welcomed.
So I guess that's question number one.
With microgrids, there are current practices
to use diesel generators
and other solutions would be nice
to have instead of the diesel.
Emergency notification,
I don't know what plan they have to work with the county
on improving that.
All these I'm looking at my notes.
We've asked for, as a county we've asked
for certain things don't get shut down
especially critical infrastructure,
typically PG&E hasn't addressed that.
I'm hoping they could answer if that's going to improve.
Also PG&E, when they place the community resource centers,
they haven't checked with the county,
I'd like to see if they're going to do that in the future
and then is there a plan for additional microgrids
in rural counties?
I don't know if that plan, maybe I'm just not aware of it.
Thank you.
-: Thank you.
-: So Good afternoon.
Thanks Kathleen.
Good afternoon Supervisor Teeter,
thanks for the questions.
I got six.
I think I missed the third one,
so I might need you to repeat that.
The first is really on the jail and as you highlighted
that was a big focus for us given the priority
that was provided by the community and the concerns about
that in 2019 and so we were able to rewire that so that
it is largely out of scope for PSPS events,
unless there's a very significant transmission
and that there so I know we provided some backup generation
in 2019 and we'll be happy to continue conversations offline
about what additional support might be possible
for a specific backup generation there,
generally we are in the business
of supporting those whose generators fail
as opposed to providing backup generating across all
of the many facilities across the service territory
but we certainly can look at individual issues.
For us, in terms of non diesel solutions,
so we are looking to contract
for the cleanest diesel available this year,
and we're finding a fair bit of that in the marketplace,
based on some early soliciting that we've been doing
that we're getting close to signing some contracts on
for this year but we are also looking
to do a pilot this year,
we'll need help from other energy service providers
to help us with what are clean technologies that might work.
And so we are launching a pilot this year,
that pilot will be in Lake County,
that we'll be looking at
for what sort of technologies might be out there
and so hopefully we can learn from that
and from what the energy services community can provide
in that space.
In terms of critical facilities,
we're happy to sit down with you
and obviously emergency managers in Butte County
with our local folks to talk that through.
I've been there for a couple of those meetings
and it is not always possible
to electrically isolate a critical facility
but we have gone through
a pretty rigorous validation process
with the emergency management team to make sure
that we have identified all the critical facilities
in Butte County.
Identifying them is different than being able
to necessarily exclude them.
We were very pleased to be able to work with your folks
to obviously get the jail off,
because it was a neighboring circuit that is not served
by a transmission line that goes through some
of the high fire threat areas and so that was an opportunity
to move a critical facility onto another circuit
that is not impacted by PSPS.
So we are happy to continue
to identify specific critical facilities and see
if there are similar solutions available.
In terms of community resource centers,
we have worked with, again, your emergency managers to try
to develop those sites,
we know that struggled with developing
a good indoor facility in the town of Paradise this year
that was a challenge.
Mayor Crowder brought that up with me when I was there
for the community meeting in November and we are committed
to getting the facility across the finish line this year
but we're simply challenging with some of the ADA
considerations to find a facility
that met the requirements to allow access for all,
so that was a bit of a challenge and we're committed
to whatever investments are needed
to help upgrade a facility to make sure that we can get that
in place for this year.
You called out the microgrid in Medallia,
we're also looking at something similar
in the town of Paradise,
obviously, if we connect that downtown core there
with some of the already under grounded facilities there,
there's a small amount of overhead wire
that we're gonna be putting underground in advance
of fire season and that will allow us to keep a good chunk
of at least the commercial district energized there as well
and certainly that's one area that we would look at
for being able to provide backup generation
as the transmission into there is potentially impacted.
So I'm happy to meet with you offline and continue
to have these conversations,
I know members of our team or continue to have
that conversation with different folks locally
and we're happy to bring you in to that conversation closer
so that we can share,
I'll do a better job of sharing
some of the specific measures that we're taking.
When it comes to microgrids,
generally, we are looking to install very similar
to what you described in Medallia.
Those kinds that can provide some
of those critical facilities
and at this time we don't have plans
for any additional ones in Butte County
but we do have a longer-term five-year plan looking
at around 30 of these across our service territory
in these various sort of small developed downtown cores
of different small towns where we can keep some semblance
of normality going during a PSPS event.
Thank you for the questions.
-: You're welcome, Mr. Johnson.
Thanks for the response.
One addition of food for thought on that Magalia microgrid,
our fire safe council has been really trying hard
to get like a biomass plant that could power that grid,
so any thing that PG&E can do to help reduce hazard fuels
and turn it into power for microgrids would be appreciative
and I know you've had conversations or PG&E has
but others on this webinar may not have ever heard of
that kind of work, so thanks.
-: Thanks for that input, we'll look into that.
-: Is here are any other questions coming from Hopkins or?
-: Hello, this is Steve Crowder, can you hear me?
-: I can hear you, hi.
-: Hi, I have a question when, first off I wanna thank PG&E.
We've always had a great line of communication
whenever anybody from the town has needed something,
the team's been great and transparent
and we may not always like the answer
but at least we got the answer
and I've got to thank you for that.
When we had our community meeting in November,
one of the things that we had said,
because all of a good part of the data
for turning off our power was predicated on winds
through the Jarbo Gap.
Well, that isn't necessarily reflective to Paradise
so you had talked about putting
in some more monitoring stations in Paradise.
So I was wondering if you had any kind of update on that.
-: Yeah and just for the general awareness of this group,
I'll elaborate on that situation slightly.
So the region at which we're looking at de-energization
of PG&E is built off of an old California fire designation
called a fire index area
and the fire index area that encompasses
the town of Paradise also goes down into the Jarbo Gap,
which is notoriously windy area
and so you can make decisions,
be making decisions based on that level of granularity
of weather that might be very windy in one area
and less windy so in the town of Paradise,
and so we're looking at desegregating that Mayor Crowder
there are some electrical challenges with that,
it's not as simple as we were discussing it there in terms
of the further research to look at our ability
to both isolate that weather there
but then also look at how that weather footprint lays
over with the actual electrical systems in the sources
into the town of Paradise.
It starts getting a little bit complicated
but I would be happy to commit to following up with you
to help you understand what we can do better there,
we think there's a little bit of an opportunity
but it is gonna be challenging to completely desegregate
that windiness but given where the electrical lines
actually flow through the local community.
-: Okay, I would appreciate that, thank you very much.
-: You're welcome.
-: Excellent, I actually wanna go back,
I got the microgrid and the community service center.
Can just ask the PG&E, it was a good one and I was wondering
if we could ask Edison that same question?
-: Thanks Stephanie, I'm gonna tag in my colleague, Michael
to answer the microgrid question.
-: Hi, good afternoon, this is Michael Huynh.
I'm sorry, regarding microgrids.
I mean, we are looking at a microgrids,
potentially as pilots we do have one,
looking at one in Simi Valley that we're looking to do
for a specific area there, hopefully using clean energy
as well and hope that's to be operational in 2022
prior to the peak wildfire season,
but we are also working to share more information
about helping our local tribal governments
on microgrid opportunities and building their resiliency,
we actually do have a couple,
we do have workshops coming up April 6th through 8th
and have invited our local and tribal governments
to attend those, but we will be sharing more information
about microgrids and definitely encourage them to attend
to hear more about that information.
-: And the other question
was about community resource centers
and working with local officials and community.
-: Michael, did you wanna continue
on the community resource centers?
-: Oh, sorry, I didn't hear that last question.
Sorry, what was that specifically?
-: Well, previously they were talking about
working with the local government
on community resource centers and communication
and so just wanted to ask you guys about that,
that's been an issue in the past.
-: Sorry about that, yeah, definitely.
Yeah, we definitely are working closely
with our local tribal governments
to identify community resource
or we have worked with them definitely last year
to identify community resource centers
and we'll continue to do so this year
as we engage our local and tribal governments,
I know we had our tribal workshop last week
and did encourage our tribal governments to sign up.
We have about 56, I believe community resource centers
as of last year and that has been a tremendous increase
from the previous year,
so we'll continue to work on identifying
or working with our local governments
to identify community resource centers
to support customers in those areas.
-: Okay, thank you.
Any other questions from our panelists of any of the IOU?
-: I think we might have some questions, Stephanie.
-: Certainly.
Aaron, I saw you raised your hand, I wasn't sure.
-: One question I could answer,
I know Supervisor Hopkins had to jump off,
but she had concerns about the CRC deployment
in Sonoma County and so I did wanna just address that
before I enter the the group.
We do have four events ready,
indoor sites in Sonoma County and nine outdoor sites,
so we think we've worked pretty well
with emergency management locally
to develop a good portfolio of sites,
we did have a lot of challenges this year,
we were trying to use all the libraries in the county
and there were COVID considerations there
that ultimately prevented us
from getting across the finish line.
So we had to pivot very late in the season
away from the libraries
and when we couldn't get those events ready
and we couldn't reach a mutual commitment
to prioritize the libraries for CRCs,
given other considerations in the county,
which is understandable at the time of COVID,
so understand that there may have been
some frustration there
and we feel like we have a good portfolio now,
but we will follow up with the supervisor
to make sure in particular, if there are low-income areas
that she called out or gaps in that network of CRCs
that we addressed those, so I did just wanna speak to that
even though she's not on, we'll follow up with her directly.
Thank you. -: Perfect.
And I know we're getting short on time,
so I wanted to allow the Commissioners
a couple of questions if they had any,
but I also thought maybe
right before we go to the Commissioners,
if each of the panels wanna just identify,
is there one thing you would ask the IOUs for improvement?
What one thing could they do to improve things going forward
that would be of help to you, beneficial to your community?
Maybe we could just rapid fire those,
give everybody a chance to answer that one quick question,
and I'll go, Mr. York.
-: Yeah, sure, I don't think San Diego Gas and Electric,
so one of the things that's working
in community organizations kind of doing that,
working with that network of social services
that are helping to provide the lift with SDG&E,
this is a request, again, we've gone through them
as well as we're looking at other state entities
is, we have a fairly sophisticated infrastructure
of community resources here,
our community of information exchange,
which we run is actually a technology created network
of clients consenting in to share information
around different services that they received
and so there's over a hundred organizations
that share that data,
if you imagine the electronic health record
that your systems are managed care is your specialist,
your primary care, your pharmacist, all connected,
we've done that in San Diego
and that we've seen the benefits of around PSPS
and working with SDG&E the AFN population
that we've been able to glean.
I think, getting more data sharing,
and understanding the consent that clients
allow themselves to because they wanna receive services,
they're more coordinated services
and information specifically the AFN population,
so I don't think it's just an SDG&E question,
it is around that data share, freeing those up,
all within HIPAA, all of those compliance,
privacy and security that you can imagine we must follow
since we're linked to a lot of healthcare records
that I think that transparency and again,
putting the client's information at the hand of the client,
that whether it's a customer of the IOU or a client to us,
we can do better coordination and navigation specifically
around PSPS and AFN, so from our perspective,
that would be a huge lift
and we'd be able to proactively work in partnership
with all of the program that we have here in San Diego.
-: Perfect, Mr. Stockman, anything you'd like to know
that it would be helpful for the tribal communities
of any of the IOUs or all of the IOUs?
-: Sure, probably just keeping it simple and in line
with my previous comments, PG&E, please continue to engage
with your tribal and rural partners
as we remain flexible with PSPS and continue to communicate.
I would say places where we can continue
to improve would be microgrids,
ways to look at power generation like solar and battery,
so that we can make sure that our elder community
and our low-income communities are able to last
through a longer kind of PSPS would be my comments on that.
And then for PacifiCorp, I would say, invest in this process
with tribes and with rural communities.
This is extremely important for not just our communities
in terms of their safety and public safety,
but also tribal governments have a very unique view
and local knowledge and skillset to assist you
in this kind of communication, so take advantage of it.
-: Thank you, Mr Hargovian?
-: Sure, yeah, thank you, Stephanie.
It's honestly very simple, immediate investment
and implementation of grid hardening
to the hardest hit circuits, that's it.
(laughter)
-: Perfect, wow I couldn't have said that
in such a fashion ,Mayor Keith Mashburn
-: Yes, thank you, I think what I'd be asking for
is very accurate event communications,
I think that's been one of the biggest problems
and frustrations of our constituency
is the information that they're able to obtain from SCE
has not been accurate and timely.
And I know that's a hard thing to ask for
in a specific event
but that's certainly one of the biggest complaints.
Other than that, I think a timeline
for the hardening of the circuits,
and so if that was brought to the city staff or the council,
so we can share the information at least,
even if it's not 100% on target,
but be able to give some estimates of timing
and because of the hardening of the circuits
is what's gonna drop the PSPS events that affect everybody.
So that information, better communications
between SCE and the city staff
and of course, during the actual event,
the communication that's put out
to the residents needs to be accurate.
And that would certainly fix a lot of issues,
so it's certainly not affixal, but it's a great start.
-: Thank you for that.
Mayor Crowder, anything you'd wanna note?
Okay, Supervisor Teeter?
And supervisor Hopkins?
Well, those are some closing thoughts,
I'd like to turn it over to see if any of the Commissioners
would have anything they'd like to ask
any of the panelists or the IOUs.
-: Yes, Stephanie, I have a quick question if I may go first.
This is all of the IOUs,
last year at this time we were already planning
to have table top exercises and actual exercises
I think we only heard of one being planned,
nope, one IOU planning exercises for June,
I believe it was June, I may have written that down wrong,
but the three major IOUs all had exercises last year,
I think SDG&E's was pretty late, frankly,
but they had them and I think they were very worthwhile,
I know there are a lot of work to put on,
but they're very beneficial
and they frankly could save lives, so I'd like to know if,
and if you don't have a representative on the line still
that can tell us about your planning for exercises
if you could please get back to us on that
and if they're actual exercises or their tabletops,
so I would like to ask that rapid fire of the three IOUs.
-: This is Todd from Pacific Power
and I can answer that we did have a tabletop exercise
on June 3rd in week, California.
It was both attended and virtual, was able to come in.
We also held a virtual meeting to the community on May 27th
and we are planning
to do both of those things again in 2021.
-: Okay, are they Todd,
I'm not talking about virtual meetings or meetings,
I'm really talking about an actual exercise tabletop
where you have the emergency management,
and you have tribal governments represented,
you have counties governments represented,
you have your operational people there
and you run through it.
-: Yes, we had a tabletop exercise
and we now some chose to talk in virtual
because of the COVID situations and their own safeties,
but we had representation
working with the County Emergency Management and so yes.
-: Okay, we'd like to know more, so that gets planned.
-: Thank you, yes.
-: And President Batjer,
this is Jennifer Summers with SDG&E,
we do have a tabletop exercise
that we'll be holding in June.
Final date has not been determined yet,
but it will happen in June
and we've already met with all of our emergency managers,
both our local governments and our tribal governments
within the last two months to start coordination.
-: Okay, thank you.
-: And this is Aaron Johnson with PG&E.
President Batjer we will be having
to meet discuss this morning two full-scale exercises
scheduled in the South and Central for May
and the North in July
and each of which will be proceeded by a tabletop
and those will be full-scale exercises
and will be proceeded by a one day tabletop,
approximately a month prior to that.
It may be closer to several weeks before that
just to make sure everybody is ready
for the full-scale exercise,
we are in particular looking at the full scale exercise
as they are five days to run an event in real time,
all through that is, we've gotten a lot of feedback
that's a lot of commitment from some of the local partners
and so we are designing that process
so that they can participate in pieces of that
a little more successfully that are more relevant
to a lot of our local partners
and so we're working through the details on that currently.
-: Thank you, that's helpful and those details, you're right,
five days was a big commitment,
but the details are important too.
And I'm hopeful that PG&E can share
how you're going about this with Edison as well as SDG&E
and I don't mean to leave out PacifiCorp,
because I think we've heard today
that you all have some really strong liaisoning
that you need to do and planning that you need to do
for duly with the tribes but I dare say
probably with the accounts
that are in your service area as well.
I just wanna underscore that,
I think you needed to step it up
and I hope you've learned some things from this conversation
from the other IOUs and some of the lessons learned
that they have incorporated into their new plans
for both last year, 2020 as well as in 2021.
Okay, Stephanie, I'll turn it over to my--
-: Oh, sorry, President Batjer,
this is for Southern California Edison,
just also wanted to chime in on our exercise as well,
so we are planning ours for April 27th, 28th,
and definitely we'll be inviting our public safety partners
and encouraging them to participate
as well as emergency measures.
-: Thank you, I appreciate that, sorry that I skipped over.
Okay, appreciate that, very good, and keep us informed.
Thank you.
-: Thank you President Batjer,
any of the other Commissioners, do you have any questions
for the IOUs or our panelists?
-: Stephanie I can go, this is Commissioner Guzman Acevez,
I just wanted to thank everyone
for their thoughtfulness here.
One of the maybe common threads that came through
was this question of transparency
on progress of hardening work.
And the question to the utilities is how to do that
in a way that's continuous and what is that forum
and potentially, is it the portal itself
where you can incorporate something understandable
for the local leadership and the public even,
potentially even mapping of the progress on the hardening?
What's the best vehicle for that?
I know some of these folks individually
about certain communities and some of the ambitious goals
that will benefit some of them but it sounds like,
you know, this is obviously something
that will be needed continuously,
so is that the best venue or vehicle for that communication
or do you have other thoughts, but it seems like the portal
is the most obvious vehicle to use
to keep that information updated.
-: And Commissioner Guzman Acevez,
this is Jennifer Summers with SDG&E.
The portal that you're discussing would be a great resource
and my understanding is that that portal is being created
as part of the microgrid OAR with resiliency
for our local and tribal government.
Another resource that we found to be incredibly effective
is quarterly meetings, we have a number of meetings
to discuss all the projects
that impact our local jurisdictions,
so for example, we would meet with the County of San Diego,
different levels within the county,
whether it's public works, planning department
and we bring our project managers to those meetings
and have those discussions,
I mean, I will go out and brief our tribal leaders
on projects that are directly impacting
and near the reservations as well,
so that's been a really effective tool
to be layered, I think on top of that portal,
because the portal can provide the information
and then those quarterly meetings and regular meetings
can explain it and answer questions.
-: And Jennifer, do you currently include
the progress on hardening as either part of your meetings
or in the portal itself?
-: I don't know about the portal itself,
what Ben scoped out within that,
but we do discuss that in our quarterly meetings
and when we meet with our governments
-: And maybe that's something, that's really great,
I wonder if that's replicable for the other utilities
that have a larger footprint,
I finally think that's a great model
to meet quarterly with the local government.
-: Commissioner Guzman, I'm sorry.
This is Larry Chung for a Southern California Edison
and I did wanna share that we also,
certainly during our individual meetings
with our cities and counties and our direct engagement,
we share our grid hardening information with them
and we also are looking at sort of meeting our customers
where they are in terms of information sharing
and so we've seen a lot of engagement online,
so we're looking at how do we,
can we put that on our websites
so that folks can access that information in real time,
we also share it online, excuse me,
online currently with our counties.
So we also have it in our community meetings,
we're sharing that data actively with them,
and as I mentioned, we have at least 10 more scheduled
for the rest of the year,
we've also met with 12 out of 13 of our OAS county offices
and so we are sharing that information in real time
and we'll continue to do that,
but again, in terms of, I think your question
was specifically something new that we could do,
we are looking at posting that information on our website
so that the public can view that
and I think to Mayor happens point earlier,
having that type of data, having that information I think,
would better serve everybody,
so that's what we're looking at currently at Edison.
-: Larry, this is Maribel,
just to follow up if I may on the answer,
it does concern me to have already been meeting
with the counties that some of the cities
that where Mayor Mashburn
and the manager, assistant manager, Hagobian
both did not realize or did not know
what circuits you had hardened,
and we've heard that there are nine circuits
that have been identified and four more are the hardest hits
that you're gonna go in and harden this four this year
as well as fire season,
that would be very important information
to start underscoring with folks so they can get it out,
as the mayor said, and the city manager said,
to then get it out to their constituents.
Very important, obviously for Simi Valley,
because of them being an urban area,
where people have a great misunderstanding
as to why their power is going up
when there's no fire even near them.
So at any way, I just underscored that.
-: Absolutely, I appreciate the feedback,
thank you very much President Batjer.
-: I apologize, I would just like to add,
we do the quarterly meetings also
and with the governmental officials invited
and this past meeting we had in March
we went through details
of the hardening we're doing in our system.
-: I'm sorry, Mr. Andra.
So when you say you have quarterly meetings
with local governments, obviously we've learned today
that doesn't include tribal governments.
-: The tribes was represented at this meeting.
-: Okay, so you have quarterly meetings
with a group of governments or individuals.
-: With supervisors, with city manager,
also university, colleges,
large industrial users, a wide variety of individuals
and we discussed the hardening and to make sure
that these information gets out to the public also.
We invite the assistant fire council, Eric
to come to the meeting also.
-: And I should remember this,
but are you also required to have a server portal
or was that just too large?
-: I apologize, I couldn't answer that.
-: No, it's okay.
All right well, it seems to be a useful tool
and maybe you can consider it if it's not required.
Okay, so PG&E
-: Yeah, we do have, I should correct myself.
We do have information on our website
which is dedicated to PSPS
and we do have a wildfire advisory board
that we're speaking of.
-: Yeah, the part of a little more in-depth in that,
but we can move on to PG&E.
-: Thank you, Commissioner for the question,
so a lot of similar answers to what you're hearing
from the other IOUs,
we sort of do a pre wildfire season kickoff meeting
with a large group of stakeholders
like Mr. Anders was describing
and we usually do that in the spring,
that's what some of you mentioned this morning
that we're getting ready to launch
and we're just now starting to schedule those
for the month of April, so we'll be doing that
over a several month period
and we do that on a county jurisdiction,
but it involves local, tribal and county government,
we do it on a county geographic area.
That's where we invite folks in to hear about local work
that's planned, provide transparency on that
as part of our wildfire mitigation plan we,
and I think some of the requirements from the Commission,
we do provide quarterly updates
on the progress of that to all of our customers
as well as obviously local officials.
The portal is one place we can do that, I think,
for the general public,
we share more technical information in the portal
with county emergency management in particular,
we have been looking at whether we would create
some sort of online tool that can help customers
with that visualization process
that may work a little bit better for the general public,
both about PSPS likelihood and where work is being done
on our systems specifically on specific circuits,
so we're in the process of rolling out that tool this year
with some of the specific details will probably come next
as we integrate more and more into that tool
and we get customer feedback on what works for them.
-: Thank you, really good comments
that many of our local government,
tribal government leadership is calling on all of us
that we need to help the public understand
where we are in the progress.
And I think what I'm hearing anyway
is some of these macro numbers aren't doing it,
they wanna know where their individual circuits are in line
and how it impacts their future PSPS likelihood,
so I think that's the challenge
and the next iteration of communication
and it's something that will be continuous, thank you.
-: This is Cliff Rechtschaffen and I had one comment
and then general comments and specific ones for Aaron.
I think we heard from Supervisor Teeter, Mayor Mashburn
and Supervisor Hopkins about the importance of the utilities
trying to defray some of the costs of PSPS
and provide solutions or mitigation
for critical infrastructure.
I know that's a theme
that's informing the investments of the utilities,
I think it's very important
that you continue to focus on those efforts.
Aaron, Supervisor Hopkins
specifically called out the small water systems
that don't have backup power
and she said the local governments in Sonoma County
had been left to pick up the tab
for most of the costs of the PSPSs,
so when you circle back with her,
as I know you said you would,
if you could follow up on some of the measures
that PG&E's taking to address the concerns that she raised,
and I see that Aaron just said that a note in the chat
that he's lost audio, so you can respond
when you able to join us or just respond
after the session is over.
-: Was there any other questions
from any of the Commissioners?
I know it's getting late in the day.
Commissioner Hawk has her hand up, Commissioner?
-: That's a follow up on,
I think Commissioner Rechtschauffen's comment
and Commissioner Baxter's direction to PacifiCorp
on providing follow-up on their tribal outreach
and consultation, if they could specifically include
information regarding their followup with the Karuk tribe
that would be greatly appreciated when they provide
that information back to the Commission.
And I wanted to thank all of the participants,
that has been very helpful for me as a new Commissioner
to hear from all of you at utilities.
-: I see Commissioner Schrom as her hand, Commissioner?
-: Thank you, this discussion and the previous one
were very good in terms of representatives
getting direct feedback to the investor-owned utilities
and to hear the conversation and for we, Commissioners
to witness all that conversation
and to see the connections being made and trend and I hope
between the local community and the local representatives,
the AFN representatives earlier to the utilities,
so that really amplifies the importance of these efforts
to mitigate the PSPS impact,
so thank you very much for all of us to put this together
-: And thank you all,
there's no other questions from the Commissioners,
I guess I would just hand it over back to President Batjer
and thank all the panelists today
for participating as well as the IOUs,
I think it was a very productive dialogue,
and with that I'll let's I guess,
President Batjer make any closing comments.
Well, I wanna thank you Stephanie
for your wonderful moderation today this afternoon,
and thank all of the panelists
for their very good questions
and I appreciate that the IOUs had representatives here
to answer and if there's more in depth answers
or communications, I would encourage you
to continue to talk to the local governments,
the tribal governments and other constituents.
With that, we now have, we need to move to public comment,
we're about 20 minutes behind
and we have people that are waiting on the line
so I would ask for those who are still on the line with us
from the IOU and some of the panelists,
if you can spare the time, please listen in,
the public comment is very important
to the Commissioners and myself,
so I would invite you to please stay on the line.
So we will now turn to public comments.
If you wish to make a public comment,
dial into 800-857-1917
and enter pass code 5180519#
and press *1
to be placed in the queue
and the operator will take your name
and information if appropriate.
If you have already dialed in
to the public comment telephone line, please press *1
to get into the public comment queue.
You will have two minutes to speak,
you will hear a bell sound when your time is up.
Please adhere to that rule,
because others will be waiting in line.
So with that guidance in mind, I welcome today's speakers
and I will turn it back to the operator
to open up the public comment telephone line.
Operator, could you please bring on the first speaker?
Operator: Yes, thank you
and the public comment line is open,
and our first speaker is Melissa Casner, your line is open.
-: Melissa, are you there?
-: Can you hear me? -: Now we can, thank you.
-: This is Melissa Casner
from the center for accessible technology,
which is the most active party representing the interests
of medically vulnerable customers regarding de-energization.
I would say that the members of the AFN panels
who spoke earlier today were polite,
but I'd like to be blunt about what's been going on
for members of the AFN community.
The IOUs have been turning off power for several years now
and the risks to the AFN population were flagged
from the get-go but haven't been addressed.
These customers have been burdened
while the IOUs say that they're learning as they go.
This was exactly as predicted,
but it's unreasonable and it's unjust.
What the IOUs described as learning experiences for them
are terrifying and costly
for customers and communities who are at risk.
The responses earlier today
on Medical Baseline were illustrative.
The Commission has already ordered the IOUs
to expand support for customers with medical needs
beyond those enrolled in Medical Baseline,
but in fact, this past wildfire season,
nothing was offered to these customers,
no increased notification, no increased support,
and the fact that the panelists today
were offering to listen and learn more
is too little and too late at this point.
Representatives of the AFN community,
including CforAT have been raising issues
since this proceeding began.
It's not the time for the IOUs to first be reacting
and saying, oh, we have a lot of learning to do.
The CPUCs directives have not been meaningfully implemented
and the IOUs absolutely need to do better,
not behave as if each time they hear something,
they're hearing it for the first time, thank you.
-: Thank you Melissa, operator, the next caller please.
Operator: The next caller is Alexa Martin,
your line's open.
Alexa: Hi, my name's Alexa Martin
and I'm the program manager
of the Independent Living Resource Center,
which serves individuals with disabilities in Ventura,
Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
When PSPSs first began, we knew right away
that as a community-based organization
in a high fire risk area,
we needed to be a part of the solution.
We began by educating the utility companies
on what people with disabilities
that are reliant on power need
and how significant impacts of a PSPS could be,
as well as ensuring the individuals we serve
have the backup power they need during a shutoff.
Throughout our efforts and communications with SCE,
we have felt that they've understood our concerns
and we have been met with nothing but support.
The understanding and support
has been reinforced consistently,
especially in recent months.
We are now contracting with Edison
to perform marketing to people with disabilities
in our areas, their family members, doctors
and the broader public about the Medical Baseline program
and other programs available through SCE.
They continuously seek information on us for feedback
and ways they can improve their response in the community.
What it really comes down to
is that Public Safety Power Shutoff,
they're challenging for everyone,
especially the disability community.
They impact planning, preparation and communication.
However, it is our experience
that SCE has been very responsive to all of our suggestions,
supported our highest risk community members
and have done their best
to keep the community prepared and informed
and are committed to learning and growing
through each experience.
Thank you for taking the time for public comment.
-: Thank you for calling, operator, the next caller, please?
Operator: Our next caller is a Will Abrams,
your line is open.
-: Thanks very much and thank you to the panel
for an informative conversation,
I appreciated all the participation,
particularly Supervisor Hopkins from Sonoma County
and her comments representing
residents here in Sonoma County.
I think what we've heard is that there is more work
that needs to get done and more specific commitments
from the IOUs in terms of what they will do
during power safety power shutoffs.
So providing information,
it will enable the local governments and the tribes
to be able to better collaborate.
This includes information about the sectionalization devices
and where those are located and what those are,
so that the local governments and the tribes
can contribute to decisions about where
and what gets shut off and when.
Without that information,
there is little that local governments can do
to collaborate on those issues.
This needs to be done along with wind sensors
and other information
so that the local governments have the information
to provide the IOUs constructive feedback.
I would also say that the CRCs are an area
where there's much improvement that needs to be made.
Service level agreements that are often used
by the IOUs with their vendors should be used in this case,
to very specifically spell out in contractual language
what the IOUs will do and will not do
during power safety power shutoffs.
Additionally, I would suggest that the AFN populations
receive similar orientation around results orientation
or the communications.
The IOUs have stepped up their commitment
to achieving results in terms of PSPS communications,
but for whatever reason and guidelines
and in the wildfire mitigation plans, for AFN populations
they talk about how and the types of ways
that they will go about communication.
I would encourage you to please make sure
that those communications are results oriented,
thank you very much.
-: Thank you, Mr. Abrams, operator the next caller, please.
Operator: Ma'am I'm sorry,
no further callers at this time.
-: Okay, thank you.
Well with no more callers on the line,
the public comment period is now closed.
I thank you all for participating.
For those who did call in,
I do want to again extend my thank you
for all of our panelists today
and for those who participated
in listening into the panel discussion,
I particularly want to thank the staff of the CPUC.
These workshops are extremely important
but they do take a lot of work.
So I want to thank our Executive Director, Rachel Peterson
for her leadership and her guidance
and I would like to thank the SED,
our safety enforcement division
and all of the folks that work so hard,
thank you so much Lee Palmer and Tony Nowell and your team.
I want to thank David van Dyken
who helped moderate our panelists this afternoon,
as well as Vance Taylor,
and I want to thank Stephanie Green, of course,
who just finished her moderating
of our local and tribal governments.
And of course, Robert Stanford,
who has been working so hard all day long
to keep us all connected and online
and with our video working and our audio working
and for his team as well.
Great thanks.
I want to thank my fellow Commissioners
for their participation today
and their terrific questions and their attention
as always to detail.
So with that, oh, most importantly,
I wanna thank my chief of staff, Shannon O'Rourke.
So she's been working hard with the team since January
on making this day occur.
So thank you all very much
and thank you for those that I didn't name by name.
Thank you, thank you and we will have follow-up I'm sure
and in some cases we've already listed
what's going to be followed up with the IOUs in particular,
answer some of our questions.
So thank you all very much
and I appreciate your involvement today.
(group chattering)