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-: Hi, everyone.
Operator: Welcome to the California Public Utilities
Commission, on this day, Tuesday, August 3rd, 2021.
President Batjer, you may begin.
-: Thank you very much operator
and thank you everyone.
And again, thank you for joining us for a public briefing
from Pacific Gas and Electric Company
on its readiness for the public safety power shutoff events,
this wildfire season.
Today's briefing from PG&E is the third
in a series of four public briefings
we are holding this week.
Having heard from San Diego Gas and Electric yesterday,
Southern California Edison earlier today,
and tomorrow we will hear from Bear Valley Electric,
Liberty Utilities and PacifiCorp.
I'm honored to have joining me today, on the virtual dais,
representatives from the California Governor's Office
of Emergency Services and the California Department
of Forestry and Fire Protection,
and from the office of energy infrastructure safety.
Director Ghilarducci will be joining us from OES
and Cal Fire's chief, Berlant,
will be is representing Cal Fire,
and OEIS is represented today by
Director Caroline Thomas Jacobs.
As well, we are joined by my fellow Commissioners:
Commissioner Rechtschaffen, Commissioner Guzman Aceves,
Commissioner Shiroma and Commissioner Houck.
In terms of the format for today's briefing,
following the opening remarks from the dais,
PG&E Senior Vice President and Chief Risk officer,
Sumeet Singh,
will provide an overview of PG&E data preparedness
for PSPS events, this wildfire season.
We will then move on to the discussion
and question and answers with Commissioners
and panelists on the dais,
followed by public comments.
And we are scheduled today to conclude by 4:00 PM.
I will say that during the presentation,
Mr. Singh, we will probably be asking questions of you.
So please don't take that as an interruption,
but more in the moment asking questions.
And before the public comment portion of the day,
which will begin at approximately 3:05,
if you wish to make public comment,
please dial into 1-800-857-1917,
enter pass code 7-2-1-8-3-8-4 pound and press star one.
You will be placed into a queue and the operator
will take your name and organization.
There may be a delay from the time you press star one
to the time the operator asks for your information.
So please be patient and stay on the line.
You will be called upon to speak,
when we get to the public comment period in today's agenda,
and we will provide two minutes for each speaker.
Let me repeat that.
We will provide two minutes for each speaker.
I will keep my opening remarks brief
so that the majority of our time today
can be used to ensure that the public
is able to hear from PG&E on their state of preparedness.
But since I'm sure a number of people listening today
were not able to join us for the briefings earlier,
I will cover a few topics of importance
that I have covered previously.
With climate change driven weather events
and the drought conditions we are facing
throughout the west,
our wildfire seasons are starting earlier
and ending later, and they are persistently more severe.
2020 into early 2021, was a very long fire season,
and California has experienced a significant number
of power shutoff by their utilities.
In fact, up until mid January,
the major utilities were continuing to call power shutoff.
This year we have already had over 5,600 wildfires
that have burned nearly half a million acres in California,
and it is only the beginning of August.
Notably the Dixie Fire in PG&E service territory
has already burned over 250,000 acres,
making it the 11th largest wildfire in California history,
and requiring evacuations of more than 5,400 personnel,
to be mobilized to combat the fire.
While the legislature, our sister agencies, and the CPUC,
are driving the utilities to plan for,
and execute approaches to reduce the risk
of utility caused wildfires through
better weather forecasting and grid hardening
and vegetation management.
One of the tools that is available to the utilities,
is to shut off power to customers.
Unlike other mitigation strategies,
these PSPS events have very real
and very direct impacts to customers.
It is trading individual risk to customers
for reducing wildfire risk.
I can't emphasize that enough.
This trade-off is why PSPS events
must always be the measure of last resort.
At risk in a PSPS event, are people's lives
and their livelihoods.
We have continually emphasized to the utilities
that when they shut off the power
people's lives are up ended,
and for those who rely on power to sustain life
supporting medical devices,
the consequences of loss of power are far beyond
inconsequential.
PG&E has the responsibility to manage their grid
responsibly and they have a duty to keep the safety
and wellbeing of their customers as their highest priority.
If and when PG&E call a power shut off,
they must have planned and prepared
so that people are without power
for the shortest amount of time possible,
or provided them
with enough information to make arrangements,
to ensure their families are safe
and that they are prepared to weather the duration,
withstand the duration of the shut off.
This is just the minimum of what must be done.
CPUC staff and the staff of our sister agencies,
CAL OES, Cal Fire, and OEIS has spent countless hours
meeting with PG&E
and overseeing their efforts to reduce the use,
scope and impact of any PSPS event.
And as we observed during the 2020 wildfire season,
PG&E indeed made progress in 2020 compared to 2019,
but there's still a long way to go.
Areas of particular focus this year,
must be on information sharing with state local agencies
and travel governments.
And we expect greater expansion
in the deployment of PG&E battery backed progress.
PG&E notification protocols also require improvements,
especially in implementing instances, excuse me,
eliminating instances when impacted customers
are not noticed or what we refer to as,
no notice de-energization.
Today, I'm particularly interested to hear from PG&E
about their progress to mitigate impacts of power shutoff
on people who rely on electricity to maintain
necessary life function, including for durable medical
equipment and assisted technology.
I and my fellow Commissioners are focused on insurance
that the utilities improve outreach and notification
to all customers with particular focus
on customers with access and functional needs.
This is the second year we have required
these public briefings, and with more maturity,
I am expecting more detail,
thoughtfulness and accountability.
We need specifics.
We need specifics on where you have improved,
where you are lagging and where you are focusing
your resources.
Where are your priorities?
As I said, many times before,
"You'll be judged by your outcome, not by your plans."
I will now turn to our representatives
from CAL OES, Cal Fire and OES
for any opening remarks that they would like to make.
And I can't see you all.
So I'm gonna just sort of call out.
Caroline, would you like to make any opening remarks?
-: Sure, I just want to thank you President Batjer
for inviting us to join you guys on these briefings,
really appreciate it.
The first two have been really productive
and look forward to hearing from PG&E.
I think I concur with all the thoughts
you've already commented on in terms of the risks
and the exposure the PSPS adds to our customers
and consumers in these areas, service territories.
I'm particularly interested in hearing from PG&E today
on the changes that have happened
to their PSPS program because of the evolving
federal court case and what that impact will be
on the PSPS program this fall.
They did make a sizable improvements last year,
over their 2019 program.
But as you said, they do need to keep evolving.
And I think that the additional requirements
or inputs that they're considering
are gonna have an impact on that.
So I'm particularly interested in hearing about that today.
But overall, I appreciate the opportunity again
to be here and get the briefing from PG&E, thank you.
-: Thank you.
Chief Berlant, would you like to make any opening remarks?
-: Sure, thank you President Batjer.
I want to echo your comments related to the conditions
of the fire season that we've already experienced.
Obviously the Dixie fire and many others
have made the headlines and, you know,
the potential causes also,
I think are of important note here,
especially as we talk about how to prevent
utility sparked wildfires.
The 2021 fire season is obviously off to a busy start.
As you gave some of the numbers already
of what we've experienced,
our firefighters have been on the front lines
of a significant increase in fires this year
that have already burned significantly more acres
than we were at, the same time period last year.
And I think that today's briefing is incredibly timely
as much of Northern California,
likely to experience red flag warning conditions
later this week, and so, you know,
the potential of PSPS could be as early as later this week.
And so we'll look forward to if there's any specifics
that PG&E has that you can share with us.
It's important to note that when nearly 89% of California
under extreme or exceptional drought conditions
or fire activity across much of the states
is going to be extreme
as it already has been this year.
And so this year's fire season,
if anything like last is going to go late into the fall
and even potentially into what is traditionally winter time.
And so the need for PG&E and everybody else
to be prepared year round is only exacerbated.
So really today, much like the other hearings,
I look forward to hearing your plan,
PSPS decision making,
changes that you're gonna be using this year,
but I really want to get into some of the specifics
on what you're doing to improve weather data metrics
that you'll use this model.
And if you watch the other last couple of hearings,
not just the word improved,
but actually understanding the numbers,
what are we actually gonna see, metric wise,
that changes, especially as progress is made
towards infrastructure,
towards hardening of the infrastructure, I should say.
How does that change your model,
as the president mentioned, with maturity over time here?
So again, look forward to hearing what you have to say
and look forward to what efforts also are underway
to avoid PSPSs through infrastructure hardening
and through the required vegetation management.
So appreciate the opportunity here.
And I know we'll have plenty of questions.
So thank you, president.
-: Thank you, Chief.
And I'm not sure whether Mark Ghilarducci
has been able to join us, I know he intends to.
Is there anybody here from...
Oh, good, thank you.
I'm sorry Mark, I can't see you in my layout.
-: Thanks President Batjer,
and thanks for the opportunity to join today as well.
I'll be very brief.
I will just say that, you know,
President Batjer's comments really summarizes
the challenges and the extent of where we're at
and the previous speakers as well.
I think framed issues, have interest to all of us,
that we're continuing to be very, very focused on.
All of those, obviously having a direct impact
on how the work of PG&E and, you know,
specifically issues associated with,
whether a PSPS will occur or not take place,
and the cascading impacts associated with that.
I will say in general, you know,
we have seen really an overall improvement
in performance and effort by PG&E,
and I want to thank the company for all of those efforts,
even between the 2019 season and the 2020 season,
things continue to improve.
And I know that you have been working hard at that.
And of course,
previous speakers spoke to many things beyond PSPS
that all factor into the overall preparedness level
and the ability to deal with these wildfire situations.
So I know there's a lot to it,
but I did want to highlight the improved performance
in the area of PSPS communications and the rollout of that.
You know, despite the drier conditions
and the larger number of fires last year,
we saw a decrease in the metric, and like for example,
the hours of time totally that PSPS has were implemented.
And I think that, you know,
by either segmenting out key areas
or micro-griding, or having the ability to keep power off
at a minimum timeframe,
those were all very positive moves forward.
And the feedback I got from local government
was an improvement.
I would not say it's perfect,
and I don't think any of us are at that level,
but there is continuing work and area for improvement
with that.
I would also say that we still are working
with you all to get
a better handle on providing refined GIS county level data.
I know that OES
does have the ability to display aggregated data
from all of the IOUs on our GIS platform.
We rely on the data that we get from you all,
and that's important for decision makers
at the different levels of government
to be able to determine how we're going
to respond appropriately.
And I do appreciate the ongoing effort in that area.
And then lastly,
I'll just close by saying, reiterating
President Batjer's point that, you know,
ensuring that states notifications
really do reflect the highest stage in which
PG&E has entered in its PSPS activity.
In other words, PSPS has a continued need
to be an effort of last resort,
not an effort of first resort.
So all of those things collectively,
the questions that Chief Berlant brought up,
I look forward to learning a little bit more about today.
But in general, I want to thank you all
for your continued efforts
and try to continue to do a better job.
Thanks President Batjer.
-: Thank you very much, Director Ghilarducci.
Now I will turn to my fellow Commissioners
and just please speak up
if you have any opening remarks you would like to make.
-: President Batjer, this is Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
I just hope to hear,
seeing the presentation before, just a thing
that maybe in there.
But I really hope that you will be presenting
on the major announcement that was made
on your undergrounding efforts
and how those are being prioritized,
how those are playing into your overall risk mitigation,
in terms of reducing amount of PSPS for them.
Thank you very much.
-: Thank you, Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
Any other opening comments from the Commissioners?
Okay, seeing none.
We will now turn to Sumeet Singh,
who is the Vice President, excuse me,
Senior Vice President and Chief Risk Officer at PG&E.
Mr. Singh.
-: Good afternoon, President Batjer,
respected Commissioners, Director Ghilarducci.
Thank you for those kind remarks.
Director Thomas Jacobs, respected Cal Fire Chief,
Berlant, CPC staff,
my name is Sumeet Singh and I have the privilege
of being PG&E's chief risk officer,
and sincerely thank you for the opportunity to engage
in today's session, to discuss our preparedness
for public safety power shutoffs, in 2021.
We continue to have a singular focus on operating safely
in light of the growing wildfire threat
from the Western U.S. and in California.
Following last year's wildfire season,
you spoke to this, Chief Berlant and President Batjer,
the drier than average winter and spring seasons,
and this summer, already being a very challenging
wildfire season,
we fully understand the tremendous responsibility
that we have in preventing catastrophic wildfires.
Public safety power shutoffs are a necessary tool
in preventing catastrophic wildfires,
and will only be used as a measure of last resort
and never a measure of first resort,
especially in this environment.
We know how disruptive it is to lose power,
and we've been working nonstop to ease the burden
on our customers and our communities
that we have the privilege of serving.
Now in August,
we were fast approaching the time of year
when PSPS is more likely,
and we know how important it is to be ready.
We're committed to keeping our community safe,
and we'll be providing an update today,
in really three areas.
First is our PSPS 2021 decision making criteria,
and I will directly address the comment to
Director Jacob Thomas that you had requested
on the impact of the federal court recommendation.
Second area we're gonna focus on,
is how we plan to reduce PSPS impacts
as a result of the operational infrastructure
improvements that we're making.
And third,
how we will provide better support for our customers
and our communities during PSPS events.
We're continuing to learn, evolve and get better.
Working around the clock
and very hard to be as prepared as possible
for PSPS events this coming season.
So joining me today are Shawn Holder,
from our PSPS planning team,
Scott Strenfel from our meteorology and fire science team,
at Elis Hunter from our agency outreach team
and Tracy Martechulum, and Vanessa Bryan
with with our local customer experience team.
So we'll be looking to my colleagues
on a number of questions and as we get into the discussion.
So if we go to the next slide, please.
Thank you.
So just to get a quick recap,
start with the 2021 decision making criteria
and the improvements that we've made,
even from the April workshop that we were engaging
in a discussion with.
Second is the resiliency work on the infrastructure,
and third is the resources and support for our customers.
And we look forward to your questions
and engagement during this discussion.
So if we go to the next slide
and actually we can go to slide four.
Perfect, thank you.
So for context, and let me start with discussing
our decision-making criteria and the improvements.
For context, in 2020,
the PSPS models that we were using assessed the probability
of an outage due to weather,
and more specifically a wind event,
also sometimes known as Diablo wind events
in our service territory.
In 2021, what we're gonna be leveraging,
and I'll talk about this in a little bit more detail,
is we have significantly improved
our machine learning models
to not only just assess the probability of an outage,
but also the probability of an ignition
as a result of the outage.
So that's a new development for us going to 2021.
And we have also been able to correlate the outages
and associated ignitions by cause,
such as equipment or vegetation.
Our prior models basically looked at correlation of outage
to wind, but did not break it down by cause.
So that's the additional granularity that we have
going into our PSPS forecasting models in 2021.
And this is based on the ignition probability
and our Fire Potential Index that could potentially
result in a catastrophic wildfire.
And what we call this is,
our Ignition Probability Weather Model,
which is what short-form is IPW,
and our Fire Potential Index, which is the FPI.
Both the IPW on the FPI,
maximize the predictive scale
by using machine learning models.
A lot of what we have been using
for the prior two years,
have been more the regression based models.
And now we actually have a lot more predictive capabilities
based on varying number of correlating factors
of when and how wind interplays with our system,
specifically, and how the vegetation in and around
our system can create additional potential risk.
We've also improved our ability to better assess
and forecast catastrophic fire probability
and behavior through the formal adoption
of the Technosylva fire spread modeling.
So prior to this year,
we did not have Technosylva fully deployed
and operationalized, which we do now,
and we use that output of that fire spread modeling
as a direct input into our PSPS decision-making process.
So that's another change from last year.
To the point that Director Thomas Jacobs made,
our 2021 machine learning models also incorporate
trees with the potential to strike our power lines,
should they fall.
So these overstrike trees will no longer be considered
outside of our core PSPS decision-making model,
which we discussed with you back in April.
But now we have incorporated that directly
into a more sophisticated machine learning framework
and the primary change, if I simplify this,
the way to think about the discussion
we had in April versus the model we have in place today,
and I'll talk about the implications
in a couple of slides,
in terms of as a result of the change,
what's the impact to frequency, scope and duration?
The simplistic way to think about it is,
back in April, instead of just suggesting
that the sheer presence of high density
of strike potential trees adjacent to our trees,
should result in a potential de-energization,
so more of a binary condition,
when minimum fire conditions specials are met.
We are now incorporating the overstrike tree risk
factor into our machine learning model,
which not only looks at the high density
of strike potential trees,
but its probability of resulting in an ignition
during the wind event.
So that's the second step that we've taken
in terms of the more sophistication of the analysis itself.
And you'll see that play out,
that it does have a lesser impact
than what we had initially proposed and discussed
back in April.
We have also included for our distribution PSPS criteria,
the condition of assets and vegetation around our assets
to further inform our scoping and guidance process
for this year.
Let me go to the next slide and I'll pause
because I'm covering a lot of ground
just to see if there's any questions
just on the distribution, PSPS guidance
before I cover transmission and what the implications are.
There's a lot on this slide,
but really the takeaway here is that PSPS
is a necessary tool of last resort,
and we take many factors into consideration
to decide whether to turn off power for safety.
And what you see in this section is we have outlined
the minimum threshold and guidance by which
the decision is made to initiate a PSPS event.
So if you look at the header under column one,
which talks about minimum fire potential conditions.
So all of these conditions must be met
for us to consider a potential PSPS event.
So think about this as that first gate, right?
So as our methodology and fire science team
is forecasting these conditions,
and we have forecasts now on a rolling six day basis,
which is also an additional improvement from last year.
We only had visibility to by four days,
and now we've got a volume forecast of about six days.
So if we, at any part of our service territory,
within the high fire threat district,
where our overhead assets traverse
meets the minimum fire potential conditions
under item one, then we consider a potential PSPS.
And there are several factors that are outlined
on the left-hand side under column one,
things like dead fuel moisture, relative humidity,
live fuel moisture, all factors
that go into informing our fire potential index,
which is a measure of our fire spread propensity.
And this year we've also expanded and calibrated
our fire potential index to account for topography.
And we've included a historical
satellite fire detection data set
that we did not have previously before
to calibrate our FPI from Sonoma Technology,
which includes fire growth in California
from 2012 to 2020,
that informs our FPI models and calibrates our FPI models.
Once we meet those minimum fire potential conditions,
then we go to the section on the section on the right,
which is identified under item two,
and there's three different elements under item two.
The first item is the catastrophic fire probability,
which combines our fire potential index
or the fire spread propensity
with the ignition probability.
And this is formulated based on analysis of historical
outage and ignition data.
We've also replaced our Black Swan condition from last year,
and this is where we have directly applied the output
of Technosylva fire spread model,
many of you may be familiar with that modeling,
that identifies instances where probability of failure
is low, but the fire behavior may potentially lead
to a catastrophic fire if an ignition were to occur.
So the second element under that category
that we considered that could include
some potential parts of our system,
in scope of a PSPS de-energization
And then the last element, is we are also accounting
for the condition of vegetation and assets
to help inform the scope of our PSPS
within our distribution system,
we have taken this entire PSPS guidance model
that we use, and we have conducted and calibrated this
with a look back analysis or what we call backcast
to understand which historiCal Fires would be captured
with this criteria.
And we've used the U.S. forest services data set of fires,
of greater than a thousand acres from 2012 to 2020.
And that's really the premise by which we have substantiated
the calibration of the model as well as incorporation
of the enhancements and really focused
on the use of PSPS as a measure of last resort
to mitigate wind driven fires.
We also know, right, as we look at what happened
August of last year,
with the many lightening caused fires
in our service territory and what's occurring right now,
there's also a phenomenon of the hot summer day
or fuel driven fire without that wind condition,
and PSPS obviously is not an appropriate mitigation
for those types of fires.
Let me cover one more slide on the strike potential tree,
and then I'll pause, because it's also pertains
to our distribution criteria.
So could go to the next slide, please.
Thank you.
So in April,
the federal court overseeing our probation issued a order
recommending, but not requiring,
that we account for trees that are tall enough
to strike our power lines on the distribution side
when deciding whether to turn off power for safety.
As I mentioned earlier,
our ignition probability model, in 2021,
the machine learning model now incorporates that factor,
but does it in a much more sophisticated way
'cause it's not the binary trigger,
but a more of a probabilistic analysis
in a continuous fashion and the machine learning
framework to substantiate the inclusion of those
high density areas that have a strike potential,
but also have a high correlation with wind
that can create an outage
and result in a potential ignition.
And we use the machine learning to predict
the probability of an ignition
that results from the different types of system damage
such as vegetation contact.
I think as we've discussed previously,
we use the area LIDAR data that we have collected
to give us the input on the tree overstrike data,
and then correlate that to relevant outages
based on wind, and then the volume of the overstrike
from the trees influences a probability of an outage
and the associated ignition in a very localized area.
And we predict this on a two kilometer by two kilometer
grid cell across our high fire threat districts
where our assets traverse.
So that's the forecasting resolution that we have
and that's how it's incorporated
within the decision making criteria.
So let me pause there.
We covered quite a bit of ground
on our changes on the distribution criteria,
and also wanted to make sure that this helped
being responsive to some of the questions you had
on how we're considering the federal court recommendation.
I haven't yet touched on the implications of this
from scope, frequency and duration.
I'm gonna get to that in two slides,
but let me pause there to see if there's any questions
so far.
-: Sumeet, on your slide,
one slide above, under vegetation
and asset hazard conditions.
What is a known high priority issue?
-: Yeah, thank you Commissioner for that question.
So a known high priority issue could be
that we potentially have a tree
that may be nearing its minimum forefoot
clearance requirements,
and we have identified it as a priority tag
within our work execution process.
We typically have 30 days to remediate
that type of an issue.
And what we would do in this instance is, as we are
forecasting the minimum fire potential conditions,
any areas where we have those high priority tags,
we're gonna be dispatching our crews safely to be able
to mitigate and accelerate that 30 day window
into within the next 24 to 48 hours,
before we start to see the adverse wind condition
traverse our service territory.
And what this is recognizing is in the instance
that we have a fairly large event
that is forecasted, and we are not able to safely
execute against remediating all of those priority tags
that are on a 30 or 60 day remediation schedule,
we potentially would consider those small sections
of a system to be de-energized as a measure of last resort.
-: Thank you.
-: Yes sir.
-: I have a question.
What is on item three?
It's on where would power be turned off?
And then it says, "Power is turned off
"if the criteria are met for more than 25,
"two kilometer by two kilometers grid cells."
So is it, power turned off for those specific red zones?
Okay, is it gonna be turned off
Is there more than 25, two kilometers by two kilometers
that's contiguous, non-contiguous
and then are those the grids that are turned off?
-: So thank you Commissioner for that question.
Just back up in terms of context, right?
So when you look at the overlay of our geographic
footprint in our service territory and where our 25,500
miles of distribution, overhead miles traverse,
and our 5,500 miles of transmission lines traverse
all in the high fire threat districts,
we have about 10,000,
two kilometer by two kilometer grid cells, right?
So think about that land area and the intersection
of those two data sets.
And what we have done is as part of our meteorological
forecasting capability in essence,
identified and drawn out those two kilometer
by two kilometer grid cells.
And we forecast what each of those grid cells,
the minimum fire potential conditions,
which is highlighted under item one,
if that stage gate is met
for any of those 10,000 grid cells,
we go to stage gate two,
we look at those three elements and identify
if any of those conditions are met,
if they have, then we consider that
should we be calling for a potential PSPS.
And where the number of 25 comes in, Commissioner,
is at times we will see that we may have
one or two grid cells that out of the 10,000
that go above guidance and based on the calibration
of historiCal fires of consequence, right?
The 2012 to 2020 data set from the U.S. forest services
within 1,000 acres and the Sonoma Technology,
data set that I was talking about,
we have landed on that,
when you look at about 25 grid cells,
it starts to give us that level of confidence
that we're looking at a potential wind event
that could create a catastrophic wildfire risk.
So that's basically the way to think about it
is those 25 grid cells out of those 10,000,
and we use this as directional guidance, right?
Because we obviously have our meteorological scientists
who are using this along with their expertise,
to identify if this is a kind of a one-off
or is this a potential event
that we need to be concerned about
from a shutoff perspective and in most cases,
we typically see that,
especially when you look at the Diablo wind pattern,
which is coming in off shore,
that some of these grid cells tend to be more consolidated,
but it does not necessarily have to be
completely concentrated in one geographic area.
But the typical pattern that we see with the offshore wind
is the wind starts kind of in the Northern portion
of our service territory,
and if it continues to be a stronger event,
it moves into the North Bay area and then it moves
into kind of the Bay area, right?
That's the typical pattern that we've seen
as we've studied these offshore wind events.
So we typically see more of this concentration of this
in a geographic area of the 25 grid cells,
but it depends on the strength of the wind event.
In some cases on larger events,
we've seen pixels far greater than 25
that potentially meet our criteria
in the Northern part of the service territory,
in the North Bay, as well as in the Bay area.
So the October event of 2019 and 2020 as an example
would fall into that category.
-: Okay, okay.
So this now informs the decision as to
where and if a PSPS is called.
It doesn't set up this specific geographical area,
necessarily, it informs that next step of decision-making.
-: That's correct Commissioner,
because then once we get that kind of the forecasted pixels,
then that's overlaid with our actual electrical circuit,
and then we look at the intersection
of the electrical circuit with those grid cells
to identify what are the closest isolation points
so that we can minimize the impact to our customers
and only focus on that area and target the area
that's most at risk.
-: Sumeet, I have another question.
-: Commissioner.
-: In your ignition probability weather model,
you talk about logging on the past 30 years of weather data,
but weighting data from recent years more heavily
to talk about how the system might be different
because you've hardened the grid.
How are you weighting the very recent climate changes
and the likelihood of unpredictable extreme events
apart from the Technosylva model,
which deals with black swan events,
how are you building into this IPW the base model?
The fact that the weather events of the past 30 years
may not be very predictive,
or increasingly less predictive
than what's happening right now.
-: Commissioner, thank you for that question.
At the moment, you know, and what we've done is,
we're not just looking at just the entirety of 30 years,
we look at within those 30 years,
what were those worst fire day conditions?
And we've identified more than 450 plus days
or that 30 year data set,
and many of those, obviously, you know,
more recent because you know,
it wasn't uncommon as I've engaged
with a meteorology team,
for them to share that we're looking
at a one in 30 year event,
but, you know, we look at that same one in 30 year event,
two years after, right?
So going forward, it's not really a one in 30 year event,
although historically it may be.
So a lot of the modeling that we do has been looking at
the worst conditions of those last 30 years.
And typically what we've seen is that
October wind event in 2019, you know,
that we all experienced,
I believe it was October 26th,
was actually one of the more significant wind events,
and many of our, you know, perspective modeling
is kind of based on, you know,
that worst kind of a condition day.
Now we also have, you know,
an additional study that we're doing with a third party lab
to look at kind of the forecasted element of this
to try to get some insights on,
when we think about the Diablo wind patterns,
do they anticipate to get worse, you know,
put aside the fuel condition,
to the point that you made,
because that's coming in from the remote sensing devices
that we worked with Technosylva on to give us insights
about vegetation, the dead fuel moisture,
the live fuel moisture
because that's key on the fire spread.
Because what we're seeing now is, you know,
as compared to last year,
what was maybe a fire addition last year,
now potentially can turn into a catastrophic fire
because of that sheer factor of the drought condition,
but not necessarily because of that wind factor,
from a climatology perspective.
So we have additional studies that we're doing
not just to rely on the 30 year data set,
but also look at it more in a forward-looking basis,
so we can continue to feed into this
more predictive capabilities,
as opposed to just relying on historical data sets.
But we've got Scott Strenful, our chief meteorologist
on as well.
So I can invite him to see if he wanted
to add anything to that response.
Scott.
-: Thanks Sumeet, just doing a mic check, can you hear me?
-: Yes sir.
-: Yeah, great.
It's an excellent question.
Basically I have two points on that.
So in order to test
if the IPW or initial probability weather model
is predictive of the future, essentially,
we tested that by training the model using outages
of ignitions from 2008 to 2019,
and then we presented the model,
we basically did a train test split ratio
and tested the model against 2020, actuals:
actual outages, actual admissions,
and prove that the model performs relatively
or really well.
And so essentially we have competence based in that testing
that it will work well in the future for 2021.
And before we put it into operational use for 2021,
we brought back in 2020 into the training data sets.
So that hopefully answers that question.
Another question about climate change
in general is that, you know,
our forecast models that we're using
account for climate change on the fly.
If you think about climate,
it's the aggregation of weather events.
And so some of the data that's shown here,
like our dead fuel moisture,
our live fuel moisture models,
they essentially have memory.
They take into account antecedent conditions.
So they essentially know that we went through
a below normal rain season,
that it'd been hotter and drier than normal,
and that's why some of our dead fuel in live fuel
moisture models and the fire potential index itself
is essentially a month ahead of schedule,
which partly explains why we're seeing the fire conditions
that we're seeing right now.
And so that that's taken into account,
and as we move into the future, right,
those conditions are already kind of baked, in if you will.
And then when we see a window then on the horizon,
that's already worked into the global weather models
that are ran by NOAA, that initializes,
and is our base state for our high resolution
weather models.
So in a going forward basis, climate change,
at least from a forecast perspective,
is baked in dynamically into this framework.
-: Well, I don't have answers at the expert level
that you're talking about Scott.
It's a really hard problem.
I just know we had a one in 35 year weather event,
heat storm last summer, and it's just as hot this summer.
And we broke record temperatures in the Northwest
by 40 degrees.
The fire season was predicted, you know,
the size of the fire storms were expected to double
in 30, 35 years by mid-century, they doubled in two years,
and now this year we already have more wildfires.
Inevitably, we had a historic drought in the 2010
and now we have another historic drought.
So it's a really difficult challenge,
and I just hope we can use whatever
downscale climate monitoring is available
and do the best we can and have a lot of humility about it.
-: Well, thank you Commissioner.
I'll just add, the last one I would add about this is,
we don't claim to have that crystal ball.
What we're basically putting forward is,
we're leveraging the best available science,
and we're bringing to bear the best minds,
the best analytics to be able to help give us
the appropriate predictive capacity and capability.
And you know, what Scott spoke to,
in terms of that forecasting capability,
it's more in that near real-time space, right?
Which is T plus 72, T plus 96 hours.
But ultimately, you know, in terms of your question,
and the broader question of the implications
of climate change and how we're looking
to incorporate that into all of our decision-making,
including our resiliency plans.
That's the work I was speaking to
in terms of the work that we're doing
with the national lab,
to be able to bring some additional, you know,
scientists and minds to bear,
to be able to help them look at that crystal ball,
at least paint a scenario, not necessarily a point forecast,
but what does that range of potential outcomes look like?
So that we can start to incorporate that
into our decision-making,
as we think about hardening the grid,
where to do that, where to do the priority when to do it,
and when we think about those resiliency standards
and the standards that we're looking to build to
are not for the climate change we're experiencing today,
but the climate change we're gonna experience in the future.
-: Thank you.
-: Sure.
-: Sumeet, I have a very simplistic question to ask.
-: Sure.
-: And it might even seem silly,
but all of the information that you've gathered,
which is quite amazing, I mean, in terms of volume,
on the PSPS guidance overview,
who finally at PG&E makes the decision
on whether or not to just not notice a PSPS,
but actually de-energize?
-: Thank you president, for that question.
So the ultimate decision gets made by a position
that's codified in our procedures,
it's called OIC, our officer in charge,
and that it requires a senior executive.
In the last year, it was our senior vice president
of electric operations who since retired.
So I will be taking this position on for our PSPS events,
along with some of our other senior executives.
We obviously have, you know,
many new leaders that have joined the company,
many senior executives that have come outside
of the company, as you know.
So our intent is to have a robust transition
and training plan before we, you know,
kind of Knight someone, you know,
that's certified to be an OIC.
So given my experience, working with PSPS events in 2019,
and then as I reengaged back in the organization,
after I left with for a brief stint
in August of last year.
I will be the officer in charge for PSPS events in 2021.
-: Okay.
Thank you.
-: Pleasure.
-: Me, Caroline.
One question for you on the wind speed.
Is there any differentiation for that parameter
based on either the location,
the tree types, or vegetation types I should say,
or asset types, or is that a strict 19 miles per hour
for any situation?
-: So Caroline, the way to think about it,
thank you for that question, is that 19 mile an hour
is that first gate, right?
Because these minimum fire potential conditions
are ends, right?
Meaning you've got the 90 mile an hour sustained
across the service territory,
and you've got the other parameters related
to the FPI or fire potential index that are included.
So then when you move over to the second box
and the first element around the catastrophic
fire probability, then we start looking at it
because it's built into the ignition probability model.
So we may have a specific circuit
in the Northern part of our service territory,
because of the risk associated with a high volume
of strike potential trees
and the likelihood of a vegetation contact,
it may be that the trigger gets identified
at 25 miles an hour, sustained wind.
And in other part of the service territory,
call it maybe closer to the Bay area,
that number may be closer to 30 miles an hour, right?
So then after we pass the gate one
to get to kind of that criteria
of the catastrophic fire probability,
which is the ignition probability times the consequence,
that's where we start to look at the varying performance
of how that circuit has performed over time based
on correlating wind speeds.
Was that helpful?
-: Thank you, yeah that was really helpful.
So 19 is really, think of it as, a minimum.
And then the considerations of those different elements
are baked into two and three.
-: Correct.
That's the minimum gate, we have to meet that floor,
and then we can start looking at, okay,
what of the other elements could trigger a potential PSPS?
And then, you know, say that we'd meet condition one,
don't meet anything on condition two here,
but we accept the vegetation and hazard identification,
that's where we would look at, okay,
what are those open high priority tags that we have?
We know we've got three to four days,
as we do the look ahead, let's get our crews out there,
let's mitigate those priority tags
and accelerate the completion of those
so that we don't have to de-energize.
So that's how, you know, PSPS starts to become
more of a measure of last resort as opposed to first resort.
-: Sumeet, this is Daniel.
I just want to tag on
to Director Thomas Jacob's question there.
So what I heard you say,
and I just want to verify, is that 19 is a minimum,
but based on geographic location,
that minimum actually may be different
in different parts of the state.
-: Yes, sir.
Different parts of our service territory.
And that's really where our ignition probability model
comes into play, right?
Because that's directly correlated to wind speeds
causing an outage,
and then that outage creating a potential instance
of an ignition.
So you can imagine if we can have a overhead electrical line
that has a significant number of strike potential trees,
that are tall enough but not far enough,
and we've got a narrow corridor,
the likelihood of us de-energizing that section
at a lower wind speed is greater than an area
where we have a broader right-away.
-: So 19 is, sounds like it's the minimum.
Do you have an average for us
of what the sustained wind is
for your entire territory?
-: Scott, if you want front front on that one,
I don't have that off the top of my head.
So Scott, I don't know if you've got the insight on that.
-: Yeah, sure,
and these are great questions.
And I just want to make a clarification
that the 19 miles per hour,
that's sustained wind speed and sustained wind speed of 19,
if you apply a standard Gus factor 1.7,
it's about 33 miles per hour on the Gus.
And so I don't have an average
off the top of my head for you,
the average across the entire territory,
but it's definitely higher than 19 or Gus of a 30 to 33.
I don't want to speculate,
but that's something that we can calculate.
But it all goes hand in hand.
It's tough too, because if you think about
our catastrophic fire probability model is,
it's a combination of factors, right?
It's a combination of our fire potential index
with the ignition probability weather.
So it's not as simple as they're hitting this wind speed
we're turning off and there's some pros and cons to it.
One of the things that's very nice about it
is that it adjusts for the fire conditions
that are out there.
For example, catastrophic fire probability value of nine.
Let's say we have a fire potential index
that's off the charts, right?
Drought is continuing, we go through, you know,
four or five years of drought again,
and we've been there.
Essentially you will be less wind speed
based on that criteria in order to execute a PSPS.
Although you have to have that minimum of 19
because of the way that these factors play together.
And so by that way, it gets a little bit difficult,
more difficult to answer your question about an average.
I guess we can calculate that by keeping FPI constant
and calculating an average.
The other thing I mentioned that I'll mention
is that we've been, as part of our distribution
outage modeling program
that's been going on for the past decade at PG&E,
we have found that there is definitely a heterogeneous
relationship in our grid of winds causing outages.
And there's a number of factors that we can go into,
but a I'll just throw out an example,
like a wind speed of 40 in downtown San Francisco,
much different than a wind speed in downtown Bakersfield
of the same magnitude in terms of its outage propensity,
just given, you know, climatological exposure,
vegetation, and other factors at play.
So it's definitely a heterogeneous.
-: Yeah, I appreciate that explanation,
I appreciate the acknowledgement that it is, you know,
a complex formula that gets you to that point.
You know, the hard part is from a little bit more
of a transparency standpoint,
the public doesn't see a lot of these other factors,
wind is obviously, you know,
an easy one for the average citizen to understand,
is it windy or is it not.
I would be curious if you're able to provide
any data that gives more on an average.
Again, I understand that it is more than just wind,
but I am curious, 'cause 19 does seem to be a bit
of a low threshold, but I'm just curious to see
is that average actually a little bit higher
or is it closer to that number?
So again, appreciate that.
On that same token though, Sumeet,
and maybe this one's better for you.
Again, I think I heard this,
but talking about the assets itself,
the infrastructure, when you have covered line,
when you have even undergrounding,
how does that take effect into this model?
'Cause they don't really see that very clearly
of how you would take that into consideration.
-: Yup, absolutely Chief.
And let me be responsive to this question
and then I'll piggyback off the first one.
Just want to make sure that we have a clear follow-up
to the question that you're asking.
I'll share some insights with you as well
on some of the events from last year,
I just pulled up some numbers.
But in terms of undergrounding, right?
So if we have a section of line that's undergrounded,
and it's connected to, what we call,
the source side device, right?
So meaning that if we have a portion
of the undergrounded section,
that an upstream of that, you know,
we have a section of our overhead distribution line,
that's bare conductor, that's not hardened,
but that's not in the PSPS footprint,
we would not de-energize in the areas where
we have undergrounded, right?
Because that risk of vegetation contact
or an outage causing it equipment issue
resulting in an ignition,
it's pretty much been mitigated
as a result of undergrounding.
So that's a little bit more straightforward
on the hardening side.
On the covered conductor side,
given that we have now incorporated
the outage correlation to ignition correlation
at that circuit level.
So those circuits that actually have the covered conductor,
right, or what we call the overhead hardened design,
they are gonna have a lower likelihood of outages.
They're gonna have a lower likelihood
of potential ignitions.
So it gets accounted for within the machine learning model
that we have in place,
which is actually one of the reasons why we've shifted
to more of a machine learning random forest,
type of a forecasting capability or predictive nature
of our risk model, as opposed to what we were using before,
which was more regression based.
And what we never got comfortable with, Chief,
is using a subject matter assessment to state,
"Okay well, my covered conductor is 60% effective
"or 65% effective."
Because the way that that was derived was,
let's take a look at all the different outages,
and let's make the assumption that if something
is overhead hardened, what of those outages
would be mitigated, right?
That's a subject matter, based approach,
and we never got comfortable with that
because we really want to be able to see this,
our system that's hardened,
performing operationally in those wind conditions.
And that's really what this machine learning model
actually does because it takes in the fact that,
at 50 mile an hour wind gusts,
whereas if I had a bare conductor,
I would see an outage and I would see
a likely hood of ignition,
I'm not gonna see that now because
that covered conductor is gonna be resilient enough
to mitigate that arc that would occur
as a result of a branch falling again.
So that gets accounted for on a going forward basis.
-: Thank you, I appreciate that explanation.
And we'll have to dive in a little bit more
to the outage modeling.
I will just say, I mean,
this is an incredibly complex decision-making tree
and whether or not you've just shared
more in the weeds than the others,
but I really hope that that the complexity to it
actually makes a more refined a decision
and a more accurate decision in a smaller geographic area.
So again, my line of questions
in trying to really understand
what is very, very complex.
Again, this slide is a bit overwhelming.
Hopefully it's a positive in the outcome.
I have one last question Sumeet, on this,
and you had talked about it on this slide.
It's really on the slide that you were on
just previous to that,
but that is the overstrike data,
that you had discussed in your April presentation.
Have all of the metrics that were presented in April,
and is that all what you are going into this year's
modeling to include,
or are there some adjustments based on the recommendations
that were made by the courts?
-: Yeah, I'm gonna touch on that Chief,
on slide eight, in two more slides,
then we'll talk about clearly laid out in the table for you,
what the impact would be for 2020 protocols,
what we discussed in April,
and then what the implications are to frequency
scope duration based on the 2021 model
that we've been discussing.
So if we don't answer you question there,
please raise it again and we'll be sure to do that.
-: Great, okay. Thanks Sumeet.
-: I'm just quickly going back to your first ask.
So what we can do, Chief is follow up with you
on what was the average sustained wind speed
and wind gust as an example for the six PSPS events
that we have in 2020, if that would be helpful.
And what I can share with you as an example
is, if you look at our October 21st event
that occurred last year,
the peak wind gust, which was the maximum wind gust
that we experienced in that event, was 56 miles an hour.
One of our strongest events that we saw last year
was October 25th, in that instance, it was 89 miles an hour.
Again, that's max not average,
but we can actually produce a similar data set
from an average perspective.
Okay.
Great discussion and engagement.
Any other questions on that before I talk a little bit
about transmission and then touch upon directly the question
that Chief Berlant asked.
Okay, so if we can go to slide seven, please.
Great, thank you.
So on the transmission side,
we take a very similar approach
that we do for distribution.
And a few enhancements that I would like to highlight
is really from 2020 to 2021.
So one of the additional factors that we now considered
going into this year is performing
what we call an induction assessment,
which is to identify lines that could create
an induction risk.
So if I just simplify this and not talk about it
in terms of, you know, electrical engineering terms,
what this really means is the lines that are not
de-energized in a transmission corridor
and are adjacent to lines that are being de-energized
as a result of a PSPS event,
it can potentially create the electrical current
from the energized line to the de energize line
through a process called electromagnetic fields, right?
So if you don't have current on that de-energized line.
So what we've done is we've analyzed our system
to identify what are the areas and transmission lines
that would be most susceptible to this induction risk,
and we are pre identifying the steps that we would take
in real time operating space
so that we don't have to unduly de-energize
additional transmission lines because of this risk,
and there's ways you could do that.
There's things you can do around grounding a line.
And we are pre identifying those locations
on those transmission lines
that could be highest susceptibility to induction risk
and do that within the operating time period that we have
so we A, mitigate the risk of induction,
but B, at the same time, do not expand
the potential scope of PSPS.
So that's an additional enhancement we've made from a risk
and a operational step perspective
that we did not have in place previously.
The second is, we've made additional enhancements
to our overall transmission model that we use.
So for example, we've incorporated now
data from our inspections that we get,
related to poll test and treat,
and we incorporate things like
the direct wood pole measurements that we get
from that invasive testing process
to determine the transmission model's
strength ratio calculation in correlation to wind speeds.
So that's the type of additional enhancements
we're continuing to work on
from a risk management perspective,
to become more granular,
to take advantage of all the inspection information we have,
take advantage of the condition information we have
to substantiate what the appropriate thresholds are
from a de-energization perspective.
We've done the same thing,
on the vegetation management side.
So we have an enhanced tree strike risk model,
which incorporates directly
data from our transmission LIDAR.
And, you know, keep in mind
that the strike potential trees on transmission lines
are far fewer than they are for distribution, right?
To give you an order of magnitude, of the 5,500 miles
of high fire threat districts we have,
there's about 350,000 strike potential trees.
On the distribution side,
with the 25,000 plus miles, we nearly have 8 million trees.
So the scale is very different.
But we have a LIDAR tree risk model that we have developed
to identify the likelihood of a tree
that could fall into the line
based on local terrain, characteristics, the slope,
the lean at a given wind speed,
and we use that information to help incorporate
the vegetation risks associated with our transmission lines.
And, you know, keep in mind
that risk is much more prevalent
on the distribution side,
given the narrow corridors and on transmission,
we have much broader corridor,
especially for the larger and the higher voltage lines of
115kV, 230 and 500.
And throughout this process on the transmission side,
we work very closely in the real-time operating space
for the California independent system operator
to ensure that we're not impacting the system stability
and reliability as a result of this.
So, you know, there's very, very tight coordination
that happens within that property space.
So if we go to the next slide,
and hopefully, Chief, this answers your question,
but what we have previously referenced
was really the impacts associated with our PSPS program
and the changes in the protocol.
So what you see in this table, right?
I'd like to bring your attention to that.
There's three columns.
The first column is the 2020 protocols.
So this basically states what we would expect
as event frequency four and a half events per year
on average, we experienced five last year.
35 hours average outage duration.
Average customer count in terms of all the events
and then the largest event from last year.
And this is if no changes were made to our 2020 protocols.
And the back casting that we've done here
is, we are looking at a four year look back.
So we shifted from the 11 year look back.
So we discussed that in April.
We got a lot of feedback, that really the four years
are more relevant for our service territory,
which starts in 2017, '18, '19, and '20.
And what we've done is, this is forecasted
to the best of our ability, right?
Presuming similar weather conditions as the past four years,
that the impact in 2021 is gonna be fairly similar
to 2020, and possibly slightly more frequent.
So I'll walk through that, right?
So the first column is the 2020 protocols.
What we have included in the second column,
which is referenced as 70th percentile overstrike
as what we had discussed with you back in April.
And if you recall in that discussion,
we have talked about the areas and communities
that have a high number of strike potential trees,
we're gonna see a much greater impact in frequency.
And you'll see that in terms of an average
increasing to 6.5 events per year.
And what we also stated is that the average customer count
increases and this analysis was basically based on the fact
that if we have a sheer presence of a strike potential tree,
that's above the 70th percentile, it's binary,
meaning that it's in,
if it meets the minimum fire potential conditions,
and if it doesn't and it's below the 70th percentile,
it's excluded.
What we show in the third column
is the criteria that we've been discussing,
that we are operationalizing and we'll be using
for this year, which is a 2021 protocols.
And what you can see is that the frequency dramatically
reduces as compared to the prior version of the model
we were proposing back in April.
And it's on par with 2020,
the slightly greater impact in some areas
that have a high number of strike potential trees.
That's basically where we're landing
as we do that four year look back analysis.
Now, one question you may ask is,
"Well, why does the average event for the customer count,
"reduce to hundred thousand customers as compared to the
"baseline protocol of 2020?"
And the reason is because, one of the challenges
in terms of averages that,
the 2021 protocols add one more event,
if you look at that total 40 year look back,
as compared to the 2020 protocols,
but it's a fairly small event.
So that reduces the total average
of the customer count down.
And now the biggest takeaway I'd say is that
if you look at the largest event
and what we've modeled here is, over the four years,
the most and strongest event we had was October, 2019.
We would see a slight increase in our number of customers.
And really the difference here is that the 2021 protocols
don't use the binary 70th percentile,
but they look at and say, okay,
I can have an overstrike tree risk,
but I need to understand the correlation to the outage
based on wind and the probability of ignition.
So it's a much more probabilistic based scenario.
And in our view,
the 2021 protocols meets the spirit and intent
of the federal court recommendation.
And as we've back-tested it,
we know that these protocols would have also mitigated
the south fire from 2020.
We pause there, you know, that's more than a mouthful.
Caroline: This is Caroline,
I just want to make sure I understand the numbers.
So, if I'm reading this correctly,
the new protocols would result in slightly
more distinct events,
but the average customer count impacted
by those events would be less.
I just want to make sure I'm understanding that.
So the quantity might go up, but the impact is less.
Am I following that correctly?
Sumeet: On average Caroline, yes.
But the way we look at this, right,
is if you look at the largest event
and that's on the last row,
you will see a slight increase in total number of customers.
But that's the way to think about it, right?
Is that the 2021 protocol, in essence,
when you compare it to the 2020 protocol,
over the last four years, I would add one more small event.
That's why that average comes down
for the customer count, 100K versus 140K.
-: Hey Sumeet, maybe you can walk us through this.
I'm trying to teeth out what is different
due to your incorporation of machine learning
to modify the tree overstrike criteria
and what is different in your updated,
2021 protocol, more broadly.
One that integrates the integrated weather,
integrated ignition probably weather,
with the fire potential index.
What does this table reflect?
Is this table everything?
What's different from what you've told us in April,
the use of machine learning just to modify
the overstrike criteria.
-: That's the primary difference, Commissioner.
So the most simplistic way to think about it this way,
so let's take a circuit as an example,
and say that we meet all of our minimum fire
potential conditions, right?
So we meet that 19 mile an hour, sustained wind speed,
along with the fire potential index, right?
If that circuit has a high number of strike potential trees,
and if we just looked at that variable,
strike potential trees and said,
"Okay, give me the top 30th percentile."
Or meaning those that are above 70th percentile.
As soon as I hit the minimum fire conditions,
we would be calling for de-energization of that circuit.
That was the framework we had in place in April.
What's different with our 2021 protocol is that,
that same circuit that may be within the 30th percentile,
now we say,
well, the likelihood of seeing a outage
that could turn into an ignition
is not at that 19 mile an hour, sustained wind speed,
it may be at 30 mile an hour,
sustained wind speeds for that circuit,
based on how that interface and interaction
of wind, our asset and vegetation has performed.
So in essence, what it does is for that specific example,
it raises that threshold using a probabilistic forecast.
That's the primary difference,
is the best way to think about it,
which is why you see lesser impact with the 2021 protocol,
as opposed to what we discussed back in April.
I don't know if that helped.
-: No, that does help.
I'm trying to teeth out, what you're attributing
to which aspects of your 2021 protocol,
but that's sufficient for now, thank you.
-: So the key takeaway, right?
If I just step back, we are forecasting the impact
as a result of all the changes we discussed, right,
all the enhancements,
it'd be fairly consistent and on par, again,
if we had similar weather conditions,
and obviously if you see something different
coming out of the wind events this year,
as compared to the last four years,
the impact may be very, well, it could be very different.
But assuming that a similar weather conditions
in the last four years,
we expect the impacts will be fairly consistent
as what we've seen last year,
except in some areas that have a high strike potential tree,
we may see a slight impact from an increase of frequency,
maybe one or two more events, right?
We understand we don't take that lightly,
but that's the key takeaway coming out of this.
And we've done this analysis at the system wide level.
And if you recall,
I shared a letter that had quite a bit of detailed
information at the county level,
which we're also in the process of now creating
the 2021 protocols.
And we'll have that by the end of this month.
-: I have a question,
on tree overstrike efforts.
How granular is your information
insofar as drawing inspection LIDAR, et cetera, et cetera.
Have you taken like a subset of these areas
and then extrapolated what the risk may be,
or do you actually have a more granular inventory
that then feeds into this model?
-: Yep.
Thank you, Commissioner.
I'll start off and then, again,
invite Scott, to see if he wants to add anything
to the, my response.
So in terms of the level of granularity,
I think we had shared that previously as well.
What we did is, we performed an area LIDAR
based survey of our 25,500 miles
of overhead distribution lines.
We started that in 2019,
it was completed and much of the LIDAR data was analyzed
and provided to us middle of last year.
And you know, it's not perfect
by any stretch of the imagination,
but it does a fairly decent job at being able to identify
the number of trees tall enough,
not far enough from our overhead distribution lines.
Now, the reason why I made that statement,
as to why it's not perfect is,
especially areas where we have canopy
over our overhead distribution lines
and where the density is pretty high,
it gets a little challenging and a LIDAR can overestimate
or underestimate the number of strike potential trees,
but on a relative basis,
looking at circuit section by circuit section,
it does a fairly good job of that.
And what we did is we took the output of that information,
and then if you recall
the two kilometer by two kilometer grid cells
that we talked about,
we basically calculated what we call,
the overstrike tree risk value.
So what we did is we drew a box
on this two kilometer by two kilometer,
we counted the number of trees in that grid cell,
we also identified what the length of those trees are,
how far they are from our lines,
and that if that tree fell on the line,
what would be the distance of the point of contact
to the top of that tree?
And we summed that up or all the trees
within the two kilometer by two kilometer grid cell.
And that's how we assigned a numerical value,
which we call the tree overstrike risk.
And that the key factor that goes into the probabilistic
model for 2021, because now,
then we were able to correlate that, to see,
is that factor relevant for wind caused outages?
And it absolutely is, it's intuitive, right?
The greater, the overstrike risk,
the greater the likelihood of an outage
that could potentially occur at a given wind speed.
So that's basically the fundamental premise
and the level of granularity that we have
on the area of LIDAR and the overstrike tree risk criteria.
So hope that helps, and I don't know, Scott,
if you want to add anything to that.
-: It does.
And so, through 2021 protocols,
that information was sent into those assessments
that was about approximately 4.75 events per year
so forth and so on.
All that granulated information went into this estimate.
A few more point two five
additional events per year versus the 2020 protocols.
Okay, all right, thank you.
-: That's correct, Commissioner.
So we talk about of the overstrike tree risk value
was directly incorporated into the machine learning
ignition probability model.
And we use that model that we've been talking about
all afternoon to do this backcast analysis,
that basically again,
to the best of our ability with the crystal ball,
if all things were the same this year
as completed last four years, especially with the winds,
we would see a slight increase in frequency,
and then we would see a slight increase in customer count
for the largest event that we had.
-: Sumeet, I have a question.
I'm gonna go at it a different angle
than I think Commissioner Rechtschaffen
and Commissioner Shiroma did,
but sort of in the same area.
So, all in all,
this shows, I'm pointing, sorry.
This shows event frequency likely to rise,
event duration likely to rise,
affected customers likely to rise.
Basically if you ignore the second column,
this is, two-part kind of,
what are the other factors contributing to those increases?
-: So, President Batjer,
what's primarily driving that is the tree overstrike,
because that is a factor that we added.
We have also, I mean,
I would say that that's the primary factor
at the end of the day,
because what we haven't included in here,
because it's a dynamic set of information, right?
It's the third element that we discussed
on the vegetation and asset condition
that has not been incorporated in this analysis,
because that obviously is dynamic
and it's gonna be event by event based, you know,
the number of priority open tasks we have today
are gonna be different than what they are 15 days from now.
So we've tried to keep this, you know,
more specifically to the 2021 protocol
and it's primarily driven by the tree overstrike.
-: So, second question, kind of a therefore on
the customer impact.
It seems to me that more customers will be impacted,
in across Northern California,
particularly in the Eastern and rural areas.
So okay, Butte county, Placer,
the areas that have seen the most
in terms of high fire, as well as
most PSPSs as well.
Some of the other areas in Northern California,
like the Wine country too, but yeah.
Is that where this is going to have a greater impact?
-: That's currently our forecast,
that it's gonna have a slightly greater
potential frequency impact in those communities
that obviously have those strike potential trees.
So that's our forecast,
but it's not as significant, President Batjer as,
you know, what we had originally forecasted
back in April because of the advancements
we've been able to make in our predictive
modeling capabilities.
Which is really the second column.
-: Then that's gonna be narrowing the area
and being more precise about who is called,
or where you're gonna be de-energizing.
-: That's correct President.
-: Okay.
-: Can I ask you a question?
I mean, I'm just thinking that if we know this
and you're kind of aware of areas
that are gonna be most impacted,
how much are you considering doing mitigation work,
other than, you know,
the mitigation on tree removal
and I mean mitigation with,
how are you amplifying the effort to prepare the community,
to, whether it's a different way of providing power
or backup power, I mean,
I think these folks are disproportionately
being impacted by these power shutoffs.
They also are generally, not all of them,
but a lot of them underserved
and they're members of the community.
They really get impacted by this.
So, give us some sense on how you do it,
'cause it's kind of going in the opposite direction
that we want to be going into with regards to that.
And I understand it's more surgical,
but give us an idea of how you're gonna address
the other piece of that.
-: Sure, thank you, Dr. Ghilarducci for that question.
There's a number of things that we're doing,
and I was gonna touch on that in the later presentation,
but I'm glad you brought that question up.
We can hit that now.
So, you know, we are obviously focusing
on the implementation of our specialization devices, right?
So that those customers that,
we can support their segment
and that really becomes more complimentary
to the infrastructure investment that we make,
so that the weather forecast,
we can drive parody to the way that we can actually
de-energize the circuit and not necessarily
have to de-energize outside of the potential forecasted
at risk area, to the extent that's
physically possible and electrically possible
based on the configuration of the system itself.
So that's one, second is, you know,
we're continuing to expand our micro grids.
We had four micro grids that were operational.
One example is Pollock Pines, right?
We have more than 60 critical services
that we are providing service of,
including critical facilities,
like the fire station, pharmacy.
And we are doubling the number of distribution micro grids
going into this year.
You know, we are continuing and we'll be providing
temporary generation at some of our substations.
And this really would be in areas where
there's a potential impact to the transmission line
that may be coming into the substation
that we have to de-energize because
it's at high risk,
but then have the ability to be able to set up temporary
interconnection like we did last year
and still maintain service to the downstream
urban type of environment and set up.
And then more specifically targeting our medical baseline
access functional need customers.
We are more than doubling our portable battery program
that we had in place last year.
So we have 6,500 portable batteries that we had deployed.
Our goal this year is to make available a portable battery,
for any one of our low income medical baseline customers
that is interested within the high fire threat district.
And I say it that way, because as you know,
better than I do that,
depending on the device and the amount of energy
that's needed, in some cases, you know,
a portable battery may not be sufficient.
So in those cases, we would work with the CFILC,
the California foundation of independent living centers
and the community based organizations
that we have partnerships with.
And we've expanded those partnerships this year,
we have more than 270 plus partners now.
So that's been expanded by more than 30% last year
to provide offerings like transportation,
hotel accommodations, food, and meal replacement.
So those are the specific types of services
that we are bringing to bear.
In addition to that, we have continued our engagement,
you know, working with our public safety partners
that are part of PG&E with the local county leadership,
tribal communities, to be able to provide
and align on additional customer resource centers.
So we are increasing the number of customer resource centers
that are gonna be available this year as well.
So those are all of the things that we're doing,
Director Ghilarducci, as part of this.
And then I would say not longterm,
but more midterm,
especially in those areas that we have seen
with a high frequency of PSPS events,
and especially in the counties we're talking about with
Butte and Plumas, Shasta,
that's where we are prioritizing
our system hardening work.
So that includes the covered conductor,
as well as the undergrounding work,
you know, that we also recently announced,
but again, that's not a 2021 kind of delivery,
but we have those projects in flight now,
so that we can start to reduce that impact
from a grid infrastructure hardening perspective
as we get into 2022 and beyond.
So those are all of the things that we're doing
both on the electrical grid side,
as well as at the very local one-on-one with the customer,
as well as the community level.
-: So follow on question to that,
just to be really precise,
where this new tree overstrike is being impacted,
is it all potential circuits that were already
sort of under PSPS consideration,
a subset of, or a subset of,
so that's the first question.
And then is there a higher concentration
of potential additional events in certain segments?
Does that make sense, what I'm asking?
-: Yeah, I understand what you're asking Caroline,
and that's the analysis that we're actually
working through now,
because we've done kind of a system wide analysis.
And also let me just be clear about one piece, right?
And I think we included this comment
in our July 24th reply comment to the proposed
resolution of that Commission put forward.
Related to this issue, is that given that we've got
an integrated ignition probability model,
it gets very difficult for us just to parse out
the tree overstrike factor, right?
Because there's a number of changes we've made, right?
We walked through that, for example,
we were using a Black Swan type of a criteria,
now we're using the Technosylva fire spread model.
We were using a logistical regression model,
now we're using a random force machine learning
predictive model.
So what we're able to do is look at what the impact would be
at the system level and at the community level
using the 2020 criteria, and then using the 2021 criteria.
And that's the analysis that we're working through
right now, Caroline,
and we'll have that done by the end of this month
to be able to provide the same type of insights
that we provided coming out of our April discussions
that we had in methodology.
So that's exactly the process that we're in now,
because we're getting the same questions
from our local partners as well, right?
Because we have them calibrated
on kind of that middle column,
because that's the best available capability
we had in place,
and the reason why we had to put that in place
is because we did not have the models
that we're talking about now in place
that the teams have been working very hard on
and before any model gets put in place,
we have to ensure that it's calibrated, it's validated.
It's got to go through that process.
Now we have that confidence,
which is why we're shifting and moving to that.
And the reason we anchored on, kind of, that middle column
is because, if we had a PSPS event between April and August,
we needed to have, you know, a upgraded model
or revised model as compared to what we had in 2020.
So that was the whole premise by which we did that.
But to keep it short, we will have that analysis,
we'll have to share that with you as well.
We'll be sharing that with all the local community leaders
as we complete that by the end of this month.
-: Can I ask a question about the covered conductors?
-: Sure, sure.
-: You're covered conductors,
how much of the lines are you doing covered conducting,
versus undergrounding efforts.
-: Yeah, so if you look at...
Let's just go to that slide.
It's slide 10.
So far we've done 547 miles.
If you look at the category of system hardening
and within system hardening itself,
we have approximately, and a large majority of that
is covered conductor with the exception of about 12
or so miles that is undergrounded, of that 547.
And most of that undergrounding
has actually been in areas of fire rebuild.
And this does not include the 30 plus miles
we have completed in Paradise.
So the 30 plus miles to be incremental to the 547.
-: Got it.
Once you covered the covered conductor process,
do you take those areas out of PSPS,
or are they still subject to PSPS?
-: No Director, we do not take it out of PSPS.
And this is what I was attempting to describe.
I didn't do as good of a job
of being clear about that.
Those areas that already have a covered conductor
through our machine learning model,
would have a higher threshold
for potential de-energization.
So it wouldn't be a complete exclusion
under any criteria.
Undergrounding would absolutely be,
because we remove that risk,
but overhead covered conductor is incorporated
within the ignition probability.
It would take a much higher threshold
to create an outage or an ignition in a covered conductor
as opposed to a bare conductor.
So, that's incorporated into the machine learning model.
-: I got you.
So condition driven based upon what's happening at the time
that you'll make that evaluation.
-: Yes, sir.
-: Whether or not you'll de-energize.
-: Yes, sir.
-: Okay.
All right great, thanks.
-: Sure.
Any other questions on prior slides to slide eight?
If not, let's go to slide 10
and I'll just build on the additional items
which I briefly spoke to in response to my question
to Director Ghilarducci
And what you see on this chart here,
is the multitude of different upgrades
that we're making to our electrical grid
to reduce the impact of a PSPS.
So we're continuing to upgrade our electric grid
by hardening the power lines,
which includes the covered conductor,
and that's predominantly what we've done.
You know, we obviously have recently announced
the undergrounding of the 10,000 miles
of distribution power lines
as part of a multi-year effort.
The details of that plan,
it will be included as part of our 2022
wildfire mitigation plan filing.
So our teams are currently working on the specific details.
I think there was a question
that Commissioner Guzman had put forward
at the beginning in the open comments,
regarding the announcement.
So in terms of the locations,
in terms of the priority, in terms of where we go first,
all of that is gonna be included as part
of our 2022 WMP filing.
But you know, what I'll share with you,
directionally, is that we're gonna be using,
you know, the risk models that we have today
to help inform what are the highest risk locations
of the 25,000 miles that we have
in the high fire threat districts,
those locations that have ingress egress challenges,
those locations that have a high number
of strike potential trees.
Those would be the candidates, you know,
from an undergrounding perspective.
And we have actually already operationalized some of that.
And what you're gonna see is, in the 2022 plan,
and we forecasted this in the 2021 plan
that we submitted, that for system hardening,
we're looking to ramp our pace closer to 450 to 500 miles
going into next year.
And what we're seeing is nearly 30% of that,
either being undergrounded or being served through
a remote grid, that type of a setup.
And that's kind of what our engineering teams
are currently scoping out.
We're installing the sectionalization devices,
as I mentioned previously.
And then we're continuing to have preparedness
for our temporary generation
and our distribution micro-grids
that we'll have operational.
All of these work streams are on schedule for completion.
So for example, the 279 sectionalization devices,
we're gonna have done by September 1st.
The locations for temporary interconnect on substations,
because this is data as of the end of June,
that's already been completed.
We completed that earlier this month.
So many of these PSPS mitigation activities,
we have an internal target to get them done
by September 1st, because once we get into September,
we start to see a higher likelihood
of potential PSPS risk from a de-energization standpoint.
Any questions on that before I touch on the last topic,
regarding the improvements,
and some of these I've already touched on
related to the support that we're bringing
to bear for our customers and our communities
before, during and after PSPS events.
-: Oh, I'm sorry, President Batjer.
-: No Darcie, you go ahead.
You haven't asked a question yet,
so please go ahead.
And then I'll have another one.
-: On the miles that you identified here
for system hardening and other upgrades,
I don't know if you can answer this question now,
but how many, if any of those miles,
are gonna be included in the miles
you're proposing to underground.
-: Yeah, thank you for that question.
That absolutely is gonna be a key input
for our detailed plan, but you know,
what I can share with you is, you know,
our focus is gonna be on the areas,
where we have a bare conductor, right?
Because that poses the greatest risk
and especially those areas where
there's a main thoroughfare
and the primary ingress egress route
that has, you know, the legacy design,
I would say in construction that has a smaller poles,
the bare conductor and a high number
of strike potential trees,
those would be the areas that we would be targeting first
from a prioritization perspective for undergrounding.
-: Thank you.
-: Sure.
-: Okay, Sumeet,
I have another question that goes
to your hardening of the system.
You have the exempt and non-exempt fuses,
and you have hardened with putting in the exempt fuses.
The non-exempt fuses, obviously,
you still have to do the veg management.
I can't remember how many feet underneath the pole
where there's an a non-exempt fuse.
So are you progressing in dealing with the fuses
that are non-exempt and putting in
the, what I guess you could refer to as,
safer or more hardened exempt fuses.
-: We are President Batjer.
So we have a two-pronged approach,
actually, a three-pronged approach, right?
So you touched on one,
which is where we're doing system hardening,
not only are we doing and installing bigger poles
that are more resilient, not just from a fire prevention,
but a fire resiliency perspective.
So we're using composite poles
or wood poles that have what we call intermittent wrap.
We're also covering the bare conductor.
We're also using rapper guards,
to mitigate any animal contacts that can result
in a potential ignition.
So that's what we call our overhead hardening design.
And as part of that,
we're also replacing any non-exempt piece of equipment.
So that's one avenue.
The second avenue, which you also mentioned
is, in accordance with the public resource code requirement,
we do vegetation management underneath the poles
that have the non-exempt equipment.
So we clear a minimum of 10 foot radius underneath
the pole, eight foot high.
So that's consistent with the PRC requirements.
And then the third, is we also separately have
a proactive program because we know that hardening
a pixel at a time,
we're gonna get to a pace of 450 to 500 miles next year
which will probably ramp up
as we continue to layer in additional undergrounding,
but we have, what we call,
a high fire ignition risk component replacement program.
And the reason why we have that is because
we know that there are certain components
that are more prone,
that if they fail, could create an ignition risk.
The non-exempt fuses or expulsion fuses
to the example that you're talking about.
So we've doubled the pace of that program from last year,
and we're looking to get 1200 of those replaced,
incremental to system hardening,
incremental to veg control.
So we're proactively replacing just those fuses.
We have a very similar program that we've stood up
for potential transformers that could be at risk
of being overloaded because of the heat conditions,
because when they get into an overloaded condition
that could result in a failure,
that failure could result in a potential ignition,
and obviously with the type of conditions
we're talking about now,
that ignition could turn more catastrophic.
So we have another part of that
fire ignition replacement program
that looks at overloaded transformers.
So that's absolutely part of one of our commitments
in the 2021 WMP that'd be filed.
-: [President Batjer] Thank you.
Sumeet: My pleasure.
Okay, no additional questions on that.
Let's go to slide 12.
(indistinct)
Thank you.
So let me touch on some of the additional
capabilities that we're building upon
from last year related to supporting our customers
and our communities during PSPS events.
So we have continued to engage with our customers,
with our local community leaders through surveys,
through in-person meetings, listening sessions,
and really gauging their feedback
and acting on that feedback to better support
both our customers and our communities.
So let me touch on some of the things that we're doing
on improving our customer support,
and then I'll touch on what we're doing
on improving our community support.
And then we'll pause again for any questions on that,
then that basically wraps up
the prepared presentation that we had.
So one of the pieces of feedback that we received
from our customers is to make our PSPS notifications
more concise and also make them consistent
across all different communication channels.
So, one example of this is, as a result of this engagement
and feedback, the IVR message,
which basically is a call that gets sent out
during a PSPS event,
we have reduced the duration of that message by 24%.
So it's close to 160 seconds as opposed to more than
200 seconds to what it was last year,
that's an example of one.
You know, improvement or us acting on the feedback
in other areas that we have launched
a address alert program,
and you can actually sign up for this right on our website,
pge.com/address-alerts.
And this is for non account holders,
such as tenants and mobile home park residents
to help inform them about PSPS events,
either via call or a text because in our systems,
they may not be the customer who has a registered account,
but are serviced from a master meter, as an example.
As another example, you know,
we have made it easier for our customers to enroll
in the medical baseline program or to self-certify
for vulnerable customer status.
Because as we all know,
the medical baseline program is more of,
you know, the customer billing type of a program
and obviously disclosing the medical condition.
But for those that self identify themselves as vulnerable
from a communication perspective, you know,
we have the same protocol with our
medical baseline customers,
as we do with our self certified vulnerable customer,
which includes making sure we have positive confirmation
from them when we make notification that they received
notification from us.
And if we don't achieve that,
we will do a truck roll to knock on their door
and make sure that we have positive confirmation.
We have increased our targeted outreach
through our partnerships
with the community based organizations.
And we've actually seen this year a significant
increase in the enrollment of medical baseline customers.
And we're up to about 260,000 customers now,
which is nearly a 30% increase as compared to last year.
I touched on, you know,
the portable battery program to ensure that
we make it available to all interested
low-income medical baseline customers.
You know, we have reached out already
to 13,500 customers in this segment.
We had sent outreach letters as of June 1st,
and we have reached out nearly to 50%
of these customers via phone calls.
Last year, we deployed about 6,500 batteries.
We have deployed an additional 1000 this year
and we remain on target for deploying
the remainder through the rest of the season.
And again, we've made positive confirmation,
sent the notifications out to the medical baseline customers
as we hear back from them,
for us to do the energy assessment,
to identify which portable battery they qualify for,
we're well positioned to be able to provide one
either directly to them
or through one of our community-based organizations.
You know, recently here we are also formalizing
our partnership with
211 to provide our customers with trusted,
localized support and resources.
We anticipate that the agreement will be executed within
the coming week and, you know,
the agreement and the subsequent offerings
through the service will be available to our customers
in our service territory beginning of September.
And then lastly, we heard that customers
who rely on well water are most impacted.
So we have expanded our generator
and battery rebate programs,
not just to those customers that rely on well water,
which was basically the scope of our program last year,
but also do medical baseline customers oversight
of high fire threat districts
and the customers who may be small,
but essential businesses.
So those are examples of the things that we continue
to build upon from the feedback that we've received
directly from our customers and the programs from last year.
Rechtschaffen: Sumeet.
Sumeet: Yes, sir.
-: Before you go to the next slide,
can I follow up on the portable batteries.
You distributed 6,200,
you said another thousand are in process
and that you remain on target.
I didn't hear you say you remain on target.
What is your target?
Who's the universe of affected customers
that you're trying to target
and what is the number you're targeting
as compared to the number you've already reached?
-: Thank you Commissioner for that question.
So I apologize for going pretty quick to those numbers.
So who we're targeting is all of the interested
low-income medical baseline customers
in our high fire threat districts.
Based on the data set that we have,
we estimate that's about 13,500 customers,
and we have reached out to all of those customers via mail,
and that was as of June 1st.
In addition to that,
we have reached out to nearly 50% of those customers
via phone calls.
And if you look at what we deployed last year
and what we have deployed this year,
we're right about a 7,500.
Now also keep in mind, Commissioner,
that some of the customers here may not be interested,
and some of these customers,
a portable battery may not actually work
because the process is after we do the reach out,
we engage with one of the community based organizations
locally, to do an energy assessment
of their medical baseline device.
Based on that energy assessment,
we identify the portable batteries that we have
that, would one fit, and we have a range of sizes,
and if one does not,
then we would offer them the services of transportation,
relocation, and hotel,
which obviously we cover as well
through our partnership with a community-based organization.
Positive to see if that answered your question,
and if not, I've got some of our friends on
from the local customer experience team,
Vanessa and Tracy Beckin, provide more details.
But I hope that helps.
-: One quick question in two quick comments.
One is, are there people on your waiting list,
this season, beyond the 7,500 who want batteries?
Second, I would encourage you to call more.
I would encourage you to make multiple efforts
every season, which you may be doing beyond the mail,
the 50% that you've done by phone,
because people may not respond right away
or maybe hard to reach.
And third of all,
does the change in your 2021 protocol
have any impact on who might be eligible?
It may be that everyone's still within the universe
of a high threat area,
even if they're now more likely
to be subject to the PSPS.
But I don't know that question.
So those are the three points or questions for you.
-: Yep, sure.
Thank you Commissioner, let me hit the second one.
So our intent is not to stop at 50%,
I was just giving you a quick status update,
get off things where things can.
Our intent is to, you know,
reach out and make positive confirmation
to all of our customers.
In regards to the first question,
regarding the wait list,
let me call upon Vanessa, from our local
customer experience team.
So Vanessa, do you want to chime in on that please?
-: Absolutely, Sumeet.
And thank you Commissioner for the question.
The only wait list that we have currently
is associated with the S chip program.
So from a portable battery perspective,
any customer who expresses interest in a battery
is going to get one delivered.
It's about a two week turnaround time
from the time we do the assessment
till we deliver the battery.
-: And then Commissioner, in regards to the third point,
on the change in the protocol,
we're basically targeting 100%
of our low-income medical baseline customers
in the high fire threat district footprint.
So there was a service that even if we have a customer
that's impacted only once or multiple times
that we have made a commitment to
and we will follow through.
Rechtschaffen: Thank you.
-: [President Batjer] I have a follow-up question to that,
which was asked by Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
And that is, you're saying low income medical baseline.
So you have to be low income and medical baseline, correct?
-: Yes, President Batjer,
for this specific program, the portable battery program,
-: [President Batjer] For the portable battery, yeah.
Okay.
And you did say that
if indeed a battery is not going to be sufficient
or work well for that individual,
that hotel stays, transportation,
those are offered and they're not offered at a discount,
but instead you fully pay, correct?
Did I hear you correctly?
Sumeet: Yeah, that's offered through...
I request Vanessa do make sure I'm not mistaking anything.
That's offered through, as an example, the CFILC,
the California Foundation of Independent Living Centers
where we have provided that grant, you know,
for hotel vouchers, transportation services,
but Vanessa, maybe you can, you know,
directly be responsive to the question by President Batjer.
-: Yeah, absolutely.
So President Batjer,
we actually connect the customer directly
with the disability disaster access and resources program.
That's the specific program that the CFILC has developed,
and they work with the individual at the local center
to identify the best location.
They actually coordinate those accommodations
on behalf of the individual.
The individual never gets a bill.
The CFILC manages all of that on behalf of the customer,
if that's deemed the appropriate solution.
And then one more thing I might add, is just to follow up
to Sumeet's comments.
So the portable battery program,
where we hand over a battery,
it's granted to the customer at no cost,
is associated with medical baseline low-income customers
in high fire threat districts or individuals
that fall into those lines
that have experienced two or more PSPS events.
So in response to Commissioner Rechtschaffen's comments,
if there was an individual who's not
in the high fire threat area,
but has experienced two or more events,
they would also be qualified.
In addition, and in the spirit of capturing
those individuals who are not low income,
but who are medical baseline in high fire threat areas,
those are the individuals who are now qualified
for our generator rebate programs,
and portable batteries are one of the eligible products
for that generator rebate.
-: And how much is that?
If I may ask.
-: It varies based on the price of the selected
backup power option, anywhere from $300 to $1,000.
And again, it's based on the overall price of the product,
and that's ultimately what it's based upon
for this particular example.
-: And I hate to be too in the weeds here,
but do you have any sense of how soon
the customer gets that rebate?
-: Absolutely, it's taking about 21 days
from the time the application is processed
until they receive that payment.
-: Okay, thank you.
-: Absolutely.
-: Thank you, Vanessa.
I think there may be another question.
-: Yep. I'm sorry.
What kind of feedback have you heard from tribal customers
or what kind of outreach and what are you doing
in regards to ensuring tribes are notified.
-: So, let me again, start off and then request
either Tracy or Vanessa to...
Actually Elise, I'm sorry,
Elise Hunter she's got the agency relationships.
So Elise, I want to request you
to chime in on this as well.
So one of the things that we've done is we have stood up
a tribal liaison within PG&E,
that's part of our organization
that has continued to interface with our tribal communities
throughout 2020.
And we actually have a slide in the appendix
on slide 29, that identifies
the federally recognized tribes,
as well as the non federally recognized tribes.
So we do the outreach with our liaisons
that occurs before and after a PSPS event.
During the PSPS event, you know,
we have two travel liaisons.
We have five cultural resource specialists as agency reps
that are dedicated to engaging with the tribes
to understand what their specific needs are.
Are there specific backup generation, you know,
services that they need so that in a week
we can be responsive to their needs
and are coordinated as tightly as we can.
And we've included some of those details on slide 29,
but Elise maybe you can also provide some insights
on the types of specific feedback that we have received
from our tribal partners.
-: Absolutely, thank you Sumeet.
First checking to make sure that you can hear me.
-: Yes, we can hear you Elise,
Thank you.
-: Great, thank you.
So I think Sumeet described the process
pretty well with how we coordinate
with tribal partners during PSPS events.
The only thing that I might add to that
is that the tribal liaison
and the cultural resource specialists
that we have staffing the events,
hold trusted relationships with the tribes,
and that is on a year round basis.
So during the PSPS events,
tribes will be hearing from the tribal liaison,
but it's somebody that they already know
and coordinate with throughout the year
in terms of engagement.
And we do that deliberately so that the tribes can feel
comfortable raising and escalating issues
as they need to throughout the events.
And the types of issues that are raised
by tribes during events,
they can really run the gamut.
But sometimes we get requests for temporary generation,
other times,
tribes just want some more general event information
or access to our PSPS portal,
which is a site that public safety partners
have access to, that goes into detail
about the scope of the events and maps.
We also provide restoration views on the PSPS portal
that are specific to a tribe,
so that they can get a sense of when
their particular areas might be restored from a PSPS event.
And the tribal liaisons are connected
directly to the central teams
within our emergency operation centers
so that they can escalate issues pretty quickly,
and then get answers back.
And those questions can be about community resource centers,
it can be about tension,
it can be about community-based organizations
that are working in the area.
We really see a range and we just do our best
to respond in real time and give them what they need.
-: [President Batjer] Thank you.
Summet, I have a couple other
battery related questions, if I may.
I'm recalling that in public comment periods in the past,
we have had some of your customers complained
or being concerned that they got the backup battery,
but they really didn't know how it would function.
They didn't understand the direction.
What sort of educational information do you,
or does the CBO provide?
So the customer, yes, gets the batteries,
but also understands how the battery
is to function for them.
And along with that,
are they clearly provided information on how long
the battery will last, what the duration is.
-: Thank you President Batjer.
Vanessa, do you want to take that, please?
-: Absolutely, thank you, President Batjer.
So a couple of comments there.
So our community-based organization,
that's delivering the battery,
shows the customer how to use it.
Certainly in some cases,
the customer, during COVID-19,
there might've been challenges of going into a customer home
and showing them that.
But our intent is that they understand
what the use of the battery is for,
how to plug things in how to recharge it, et cetera.
The second piece is definitely an interesting question.
We give general guidelines that this is, you know,
the battery should be used for the medical device
and generally how long it should last
considering what device is being used.
Now, if customers decide to plug in additional items
to that battery, that could impact
the ability for it to last as long as advised.
So, we do reiterate,
or the community-based organization does reiterate
to customers that this is simply for the medical device
and that other needs could impact
how long they could rely on that battery.
And there are different sizes, right?
We have a variety of different sizes
based on what the customer need is.
So based on what device they're using,
we will provide the appropriate size battery
to assist in using that device
for the extended duration of the outage.
-: And just a follow up if I may, Vanessa.
If the customer is having problems,
'cause we've heard this in public comment too,
if the customer's having problems with the battery,
it's not functioning properly,
has nothing to do with their direction
or their understanding of the direction,
but it's just not functioning properly.
Do you all replace it?
Does CBO replaces it?
And do you have a sense of how long that takes?
'Cause we've heard it's difficult.
-: Yeah, absolutely President Batjer.
And we appreciated that feedback.
What's different this season is that we have engaged
with those community based organizations
that are delivering on behalf
of the portable battery program
so that they can be generally responsive
during PSPS events.
Unfortunately they often take place on weekends
and holidays, so they are able to replace the battery.
They are leaving behind instructions as well.
So if there are questions, concerns,
the customer doesn't have to recall everything
that they were instructed at the time of delivery.
The second piece that I would add is,
if there is a situation where that
community-based organization is not able to immediately
replace the battery and the customer involved
in kind of an imminent likeliness of shutdown,
then we can fall back on the California foundation
for independent living centers
and they can deliver a battery to the customer, right?
So most importantly, we want to make sure that
that customer is able to sustain their needs,
we'll figure out the logistics on the backend,
between the two programs.
-: Okay, that's very helpful, thank you.
Sumeet, I know we've been interrupting you
with lots of questions along the way,
as I had warned you we would,
but we are getting beyond our final time
and we do need to soon move to public comment period.
-: So President Batjer,
I'm happy to conclude the remarks here.
If you would like to shift to that,
or if you maybe allocate another few minutes,
I can cover the last two slides very briefly.
And some of this I've already touched upon,
which is more specific additional programs
that we'll be bringing on the community support.
-: If you could sum up the last two slides.
If you could please,
and then we'll need to really move to public comment.
And before I do, before you do that, and I do that,
I do want to ask that all of the PG&E
people who are here with us today
remain on the line, while and during
the public comment period,
so you all can hear any public comments
that are made, thank you.
Sumeet: Thank you, President Batjer,
you have our commitment,
all of the folks that have been engaging
in this discussion from PG&E will be on until we conclude.
So just in terms of the second to last slide,
which is slide 13.
So obviously in addition to engaging and listening
to our customers, we're also listening
to our community partners.
We have a multitude of different methods
by which we engage with our community partners.
It's through our public safety partners,
through quarterly regional working groups,
we have ongoing PSPS preparedness webinars,
exercises in various briefings and workshops.
You know, we've obviously heard quite a bit of feedback too,
in regards to the portal,
to be able to provide more timely, consistent, accurate,
and easy to navigate information.
So we're making some significant enhancements
on that portal to be able to help enable
and be responsive to that feedback.
We've also expanded our programs
that we implemented last year.
You know, one is, I made a reference to this,
and Vanessa did as well,
on the community-based organizations.
So we've increased that partnership, you know,
by 30% going into this year to more than 270 partnerships.
And these partnerships actually are multifold.
They're not just information sharing
they're also to support our customers,
as we've been discussing, through portable batteries,
hotel stays, food stipends, accessible transportation,
food replacement, and food delivery.
We have also engaged with our agency and local partners
for their feedback on locations
of the customer resource centers.
So going into 2021, we'll have about 380 locations,
both a combination of indoor and outdoor.
You know, obviously last year
we had to focus more on outdoor,
given the COVID, you know, restrictions.
And, you know, we have the ability to be able
to pull that same lever if we find ourselves
in that situation, hope we don't.
But if we do, we are well prepared
to be able to navigate through that.
We're also hosting workshops
with telecommunication providers.
We are including them in our PSPS exercises,
tabletop breakouts that we're doing.
And we're also sharing site by site data
with them, regarding the likelihood of PSPS,
so that they can take this information into consideration
as part of their resiliency planning process.
And then during events, you know,
Elise made a reference to this,
I made a reference to this, with the tribal community,
but more broadly,
we work with all the critical facilities
in the local community that may be impacted,
for example, hospitals that may require on-premise
backup generation needs.
And we saw quite a bit of this last year,
just given the outflow of hospitals
because of the COVID cases,
because many of the backup generation in hospitals,
typically, is there to be able to sustain
critical support during the case of a power outage,
so primarily the surgical rooms and those types of things.
But given the fact that the outflow that occurred
as a result of COVID, you know,
they obviously needed additional capacity
on the backup generation,
which we were able to bring to bear.
Just real quickly,
I'll leave you with the last slide, which is like the team.
This is just an example of how we are, you know,
better creating more visibility for our customers
that could be impacted by PSPS events.
This is actually a new portal that we have launched.
It's an interactive PSPS planning map
that's available through our website.
You can actually Google it and it'll pop up.
But it's really a resource that's been developed
to share information with our customers
and our communities about locations
that are most likely to experience a PSPS events.
So we have included, you can look it up by address,
you can look it up by county,
how many actual PSPS events occurred in 2019, 2018, 2020.
And it shows the past events that have occurred
and the potential PSPS area,
that indicated area may be likely
to experience a PSPS event,
just from a preparedness perspective.
So we actually intend to use this platform in the future
to also provide more visibility on the locations
of various wildfire safety improvements
and mitigation efforts that we are putting in place.
So that's kind of a capability that doesn't exist today,
but we're working through that process
and that's forthcoming.
So I'll pause there and then see if there's any final
questions or comments and turn it over to you,
President Batjer, for the public comment.
-: There's just a reflection here,
and I don't know if the scale is just a little distinct
where we obviously had the other utilities present to us
and Edison had outlined over 1600 partnerships
with local community based organizations.
And although you mentioned this 270 is a 30% increase,
there still seems to be a scale difference there
in terms of how connected you seem to be
with some of the local organizations
that can really help in response.
And maybe that's something you can think about.
I don't have a specific recommendation,
just seems to be a big difference.
-: Yeah, thank you Commissioner Guzman for that.
I don't know the context in which, you know,
the reference was being made by SCE and other utilities,
but we're happy to engage with them
because we do also have additional partnerships
with food banks, you know, to provide replacement meals.
So we're happy to, you know, get some more insights,
you know, in that capacity.
One of our objectives really had been to ensure
we at least have multiple partnerships
with all of the CBOs in communities
that are impacted or could be impacted
as a result of PSPS events.
But we'll take that feedback and thank you for sharing that.
-: Are there other questions?
-: Well, President Batjer.
I had another quick question,
since we're comparing some things we've heard
to what we heard this morning, Sumeet.
Edison told us
that they had posted publicly
a technical paper and fact sheet
on the threshold they use for de-energization
and that they were already sharing them
with their public safety partners,
and we're gonna also share the real-time
analysis with the public.
That was their goal.
Do you have a similar goal or capability?
Can you do the same thing?
You've articulated a great deal
about how you're making your decisions.
The public has consistently asked us and utilities
for more transparency in how de-energization
decisions are made.
So maybe can you comment on where you are on this point?
-: Sure, Commissioner.
I mean, we share, you know,
obviously not just to the PSPS criteria,
but not to the level of details
that we obviously shared in this forum,
but our public safety partners,
who many of you know, which we're working
in the communities, in the fire services, previously,
have those relationships at the local level.
And we are sharing that on an ongoing basis.
And as I mentioned,
as we have implemented not just the tree overstrike
risk criteria, when we did that back in April, you know,
we were engaging through all the local channels that we have
in regards to why there potentially could be
a greater impact from a frequency perspective,
what's driving that,
and we plan to do the same with the 2021 protocols.
You know, in addition to that,
all of the real-time weather monitoring information
that we have, with the weather stations
that we have installed on our network,
which is now north of 1200,
all that information is made available
via a public website on pge.com/weather.
And we continue to advocate and share that information
with the local leaders, the local communities,
the loCal Fire departments, you know,
as much as so where,
when we get a notification of a potential fire start
through our satellite systems,
that goes into our wildfire safety operation center,
where we're sharing that information as well,
in a public way.
And again Commissioner, on this one,
we're happy to take that, you know, feedback,
you know, engage with SCE,
we've worked with them very closely
to ensure there's no daylight on some of this.
And, you know, we absolutely benefit
from the best practices that are being shared
with the IOUs within California.
So we're happy to take that as another follow up
to ensure that, you know,
the practices that they're following,
the practices that we're following are consistent
and ensure that we're keeping all the community members
abreast of all the decision-making
and how we're doing it to the extent feasible.
-: Thank you,
I think to the extent that you're calculating
your ignition probability weather index
and your fire potential index,
and you're sharing them in real time
or close to real time,
obviously not in the way that it interferes
with your operational capabilities,
you do more to build public confidence.
-: Sure, thank you Commissioner for that feedback.
-: By the way, Sumeet,
they said that, and Commissioner Shiroma looked it up
and it's sce.com/psps-decision-making.
So that's where you can find it.
(laughs)
We really do need to move on now to a public comment,
any other questions from the dais?
Okay, seeing and hearing none.
I'm going to now move to public comments,
the public comment portion of our agenda.
As a reminder, if you wish to make a public comment,
dial into 1-800-857-1917.
Enter pass code 7-2-1-8-3-8-4 pound,
and press star one,
you will be placed into a queue and the operator
will take your name and organization.
There may be a delay from the time you press star one
to the time the operator asks you for your information.
So please be patient and stay on the line.
As a reminder,
you will be given two minutes to speak,
two minutes for each speaker.
You will hear a bell sound when your time is up.
So please adhere to the timeframes.
Operator, would you please invite the first caller in.
Operator: Thank you.
The public comment line is now open.
Our first speaker is Will Abrams.
Mr. Abrams, your line is open.
Mr. Abrams: Thanks very much.
Thanks very much President Batjer and Commissioners.
I appreciate the thoughtful discussion.
Big concern regarding the tone of the discussion.
I think if we had the Dixie fire
as the background of the conversation,
I think there would be a bit more urgency regarding
how the discussion takes place.
I'm particularly concerned, and Mr. Singh
always does a great job associated with his presentation,
but I'm concerned that we're applying
really a linear risk model here to really address
a compound risk profile.
That particularly comes to a head
when I hear Mr. Singh talk about the decision making
about where to underground and that
that is gonna be based on legacy equipment.
These are compound risks.
And so those decisions about where to underground
and how to underground, need to be approached
through that lens.
Similarly, Mr. Singh has several times discussed
the historical data set,
which of course is important to look at
as we're addressing risks,
but what's missing from that historical data set,
are the causes of past fires.
As you look through the PG&E wildfire mitigation plan,
you will see no mention of past fires,
no mapping of the causes of past fires
to how they're mitigating risks.
That needs to be incorporated.
This is particularly important
as we think about the Dixie fire,
because there has been this notice
that there was a reclosure
that was near the start of the fire.
PG&E has instead, and the wildfire mitigation plan,
use a generalized term of sectionalization devices,
which is not sufficient to be actionable.
The specific devices need to be shared with the public,
with municipalities so they can understand
where we can have public safety power shutoffs,
where we can have gates and contain ignitions
like the Dixie fire.
Similarly, as we're talking about the listening sessions
and the ways that we get information from rate payers,
what is missing from that is a data driven approach.
We need to really make sure that it isn't just
the loudest voice in the room,
but it is based on data from multiple sources
about how we're proceeding.
I apologize for going over the time,
but I would just remind folks
that there's a growing number of wildfire survivors
out there that need to be front and center
of those in the room.
Some of these wildfires survivors
have been forced to take PG&E shares,
and we're in a very difficult situation right now
with each fire, really preventing us
from rebuilding our homes and our lives.
And I just wanted the Commission to recognize that.
Thank you very much.
-: Thank you, Mr. Abrams.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Next up is RL Strauss.
Mr. Strauss, your line is open.
Mr. Strauss: Thank you.
Good afternoon.
-: Mr. Strauss, we can barely hear you.
Can you speak up or speak directly into your device?
Mr. Strauss: Thank you for pointing that out.
Is this better?
-: Much better, Thank you.
Mr. Strauss: Good, thank you.
Good afternoon, thank you for this opportunity to comment.
On behalf of small business advocates,
we wish to point out the critical role
that the Commission has taken in moving forward
and improving PG&E's PSPS approach,
which were it not for the Commission's action,
we believe in the de-energization and the PSPS proceeding
in response to 2019 errors,
we do not think that we would see such a robust,
and improved approach, however,
and I had to step out for a moment so I may have missed it,
I have not heard anything about the integration
of the consideration of the public safety impacts
of PSPS, and how that is accounted for.
As we all know that is a requirement,
particularly from the decision from the de-energization
proceeding, as well as the PSPS OII,
and it doesn't seem like it's been addressed
for any of the IOUs to date.
We recognize in particular that any amounts
of notification or mitigation does relatively little
compared to prevention of unneeded,
and the decision not to undertake unneeded PSPS,
particularly the small businesses that don't have
the resources to deal with many days
or even potentially, just one day of electricity outages.
So we look forward to additional steps to reduce the need
for PSPS, particularly undergrounding,
we're very pleased to hear that that's being looked at
very heavily and as an expansive approach by PG&E
and more aggressive involvement by the Commission
to ensure that the utility continue to take all the steps
that are possible to prevent PSPS events
and to consider the public health impacts
of those additions.
Thank you very much.
-: Thank you, Mr. Strauss.
Next caller, please, operator.
Operator: Next up is Rob Holly.
Mr. Holly, your line is open.
Mr. Holly: Hi, I'm Rob Holly from San Jose
and the Solar Rights Alliance.
This discussion has been about on minimizing the damage
and disruption from our poorly maintained power lines.
Here's a thought, why don't we move to needing
fewer power lines that need to be maintained.
When I'm running on battery,
I'm not competing with my neighbors
for the long distance power lines.
Those power lines are the real reason
for the high cost of power and increasing wildfire danger.
Solar and battery use, well, is to reduce
the number of lines we need to maintain,
instead, the IOUs just want to string more wires
because that's how they make their money.
The CPUC should be encouraging solar and storage
and not trying to kill it.
Studies show that we will save rate payers $120 billion
over the next 30 years.
Why do you want to trade a real solution
for the mythical power plants that the ACC proposes
and yet more long distance power lines
operated by the same folks that brought us San Bruno,
the campfire, and it sounds like,
several of the fires burning today.
Thank you.
-: Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Thank you.
Next up is Nancy Macy.
Ms. Macy, your line is open.
Ms. Macy: Yes, hello, it's Nancy Macy.
Sorry it was misunderstood.
I'm chair of the Valley Women's Club's
environmental committee for the San Lorenzo Valley.
We're located in the Santa Cruz coastal mountain range
and are still suffering under the CZU
lightening complex fires impacts, as you can imagine.
I appreciate the general recognition
by President Batjer and each of the agency leaders,
that PSPS must only be the last resort.
I was especially gratified that our Cal Fire chief
emphasized the importance of infrastructure impacts
since that is what is proving again and again,
to be the crucial factor in failing to prevent wildfires.
PG&E is actually being allowed to fail
to mitigate wildfires in a climate warming future.
It is imperative that everyone understand PG&E's
continuing failure to expand
far more miles, many miles of a system.
Decades of failure that have been
and continue to cause wildfire is not being mitigated.
This is because PG&E is barely beginning to modernize
the significant reaches of its distribution line
in high fire threat areas.
The numbers on slide 10,
you need to look at them, they're pathetic.
In stark contrast,
you have example of Southern California Edison
replacing many times as many miles of wires
with steel core, triple insulated conductor
as their regular wire,
along with modernizing the entire system,
they are far ahead of PG&E and have
far fewer forested miles.
And now, in their 2021 update
to their wildfire mitigation plan,
they have proven that it is actually working
and that this is the right way to go.
PG&E is wasting billions on the mythology
of vegetation management and causing severe
environmental damage in the meantime.
Let's get the focus on massive
improvement of the infrastructure.
Thank you.
-: Thank you.
Operator the next caller please.
Operator: Next up is Tori Summers.
Mr. Summers, your line is open.
Mr. Summers: Yes, thank you.
And thank you, President Batjer
and Commissioners for conducting this meeting
and PG&E for participating as well.
I'm with Charter Communications
and we just wanted to take this opportunity
to let the Commission know how seriously
we take PSPS events.
And I know there was a comment made earlier
about Southern California Edison, and this is PG&E,
but we did not have the chance to raise it earlier.
And we just simply wanted to clarify something regarding
a comment they made about training that they had.
Charter has participated in numerous PSPS communication,
PSPS meetings with SCE.
In particular, we participated one on March 3rd,
March 25th, June 1st, and we participated
in their portal training.
Then on July 6th, we participated in the monthly
fire preparedness meeting with the Commission.
At that meeting, SCE mentioned it's training,
and we questioned getting notice of that meeting.
Immediately following that meeting that July 6th meeting,
we had a July 12th meeting with SCE to discuss
points of contact.
Just last week, we told Southern California Edison
who to send the invitation to for their upcoming
August 19th training.
Charter will certainly be participating in that meeting.
Although we provided that information August 19th,
the person we gave them the contact information for,
has still not received the official invitation,
but we will be participating.
Some of these communication issues may arise
from the sheer number of notices
we get from Southern California Edison.
This is an issue we have discussed with the PUC
multiple times in the past,
and we've just discussed with SCE.
Southern California Edison has indicated
that they are working on that,
but simply due to the sheer number of notices,
this remains a challenge.
Thank you once again, Commissioners
for conducting this meeting and we look forward
to future meetings as well.
Thank you.
-: Thank you.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Next up, is Melissa Kasnits.
Ms. Kasnitz, your line is open.
Ms. Kasnitz: Thank you, can you hear me?
-: Yes, we can hear you fine, Melissa.
Ms. Kasnitz: Thank you, this is Melissa Kasnitz,
the legal director for the center for accessible technology,
an active party in the seatings addressing
the de-energization before the Commission.
I want to pick up on a point made previously
by Mr. Ariel Strauss, of the small business
utilities association,
and express my extreme concern that not withstanding
repeated emphasis by the Commission and parties
to the CPUC proceedings.
PG&E's guidance is effectively silent
on how it considers the harms that come
as part of power outages and its analysis
of whether to shut the power off.
This was not identified in any way
in the decision making criteria,
which only looked at very...
In the discussion of transmission,
but not at all in distribution.
President Batjer has been clear
and the Commission decisions have been clear
that the utilities need to consider the harms
that come from turning off the power
with the reduction in risk
that comes with the power outages.
There's been a lot of work and analysis done on fire risk,
but virtually nothing on the harms of outages.
As the representative of people with disabilities
and people with medical vulnerabilities
who are within PG&E's territory,
this lack of consideration of the direct harm of outages
goes against the decisions that have been issued.
And there's a real void in the process
that's been articulated by PG&E here today.
Thank you.
-: Thank you.
Operator, the next caller please.
Operator: President Batjer,
I have no additional speakers
on the public comment line currently.
-: Okay, operator.
If anyone still wishes to call in,
please call +1 800-857-1917
and enter 7-2-1-8-3-8-4 pound and press star one.
Operator, has anybody else shown up on the call?
Operator: President Batjer,
there are no additional speakers
on the public comment line at this time.
-: Okay.
Thank you very much operator.
With no more callers on the line.
The public comment period for this meeting is now closed.
So once again, I would like to thank everyone
who has joined us today.
And in particular, I would like to thank
my fellow Commissioners and our esteemed colleagues
from CAL OES, Cal Fire and OES.
I would like to add my special thanks to our
executive director, Rachel Peterson,
and to other members of our staff,
and I must say including one of my advisors,
Nora Hawkins, and my Chief of Staff,
Shannon O'Rourke for preparing
and helping me prepare and the rest of the CPU staff
to organize these very important meetings.
Tony, I want to thank you as well.
So please, join us tomorrow
for additional meetings on PSPS of the smaller
IOU companies, which I announced
at the beginning of this meeting.
So thank you all very, very much
for being here today with us
and have a safe evening.
Thank you.