Regional utility companies work to mitigate wildfire risks

COEUR d’ALENE, Idaho — The interaction of electrical lines and the landscape around them, especially trees, often ends badly — it can cause power outages any time of year, but in the summer, in particular, it can cause fires. Keeping fires from happening requires close attention to power lines and the areas around them, and that’s not just a summer job.

“Fire season is a condition that can exist at any time of year,” wrote JoDee Black of NorthWestern Energy, based in Missoula, Mont., via email. “Each year’s weather conditions impact those situations differently: Early season rains encourage plant growth which fuels fires later in the growing season, and winters with little snow leave dry plant material available for late season fires.”

The weather is only part of monitoring and maintenance to reduce wildfire risk. The Bonneville Power Administration is working on a program to centralize its tracking of unauthorized campsites and junk dumped in BPA rights of way. A press release issued by the agency Aug. 18 said dumping activity has increased on BPA land. The release said 12 sites have been cleared since the program’s inception. Dumping adds fuel to areas near power lines and may introduce items that could ignite wildfires such as chemicals or glass that can focus light and start a blaze.

Preventing wildfires has been a focus of many Western utilities, and they have invested a lot of money in the effort. Black said NorthWestern Energy has spent more than $80 million over the last decade to remove trees that might hit a power line, take out vegetation near electrical lines and add equipment that makes it more difficult for a wayward tree — or a wayward object of any kind — to start a fire.

That’s called “hardening” electrical lines, and electrical utilities throughout the region have focused on it, utility officials said.

“The equipment is essentially wired to detect when there’s a problem and shut off rather than continue to serve power across a line that’s being taken down,” said BPA spokesperson Maryam Habibi.

Erika Neff, vice president for member service and experience for Kootenai Electric Cooperative based in Hayden, Idaho, said via email that operations can be adjusted to take forest and range conditions into account. On Aug. 17, the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for high winds and high temperatures in Northern Idaho, which caused KEC to change its operations.

“During times of elevated fire danger, we modify our system to turn off automatic re-energization when a fault occurs. Faults can be caused by lightning, heavy winds, trees or branches falling on lines, vehicles colliding with poles, wildlife and more,” she wrote.

That variance allows for manual monitoring of outages to ensure fires aren’t involved and fire risk is mitigated.

“Under normal conditions, reclosers act as high-voltage electric switches that operate much like a circuit breaker in (a) home,” Neff said. “During times of elevated fire danger, when the reclosers are set on ‘non-reclose,’ the breaker will open and the line will remain de-energized until KEC crews can patrol and inspect the line.”

On Aug. 17 and 18, the cooperative’s crews were in the woods monitoring equipment and weather conditions, and their presence paid off. They discovered a fire — not started by an electrical line, but from a different source, Neff wrote — and contacted fire crews. The fire was contained to less than an acre.

Monitoring the weather conditions is important in fire prevention. Christine Pratt, public information officer for the Grant County Public Utility District in Central Washington, said systems operations crews get daily updates.

“This includes an awareness section where we include red flag warnings and other fire risk information for situational awareness,” she said.

Part of preventing wildfires around electrical lines is keeping the line and outside objects from interacting in the first place. Avista Corporation crews inspected all of its power lines in 2022 to determine the risks of trees falling into power lines and took out 22,000 dead or weakened trees, according to the Spokane-based company’s wildfire resiliency report.

The Grant County PUD started increasing the distance between power lines and tree branches when pruning trees, according to Pratt.

“We annually do ground vegetation management around transmission structures,” Pratt added.

Utility district crews that are out doing maintenance take equipment with them to help reduce the risk of an accidental wildfire, Pratt said, including water trucks. Some maintenance trucks also have been outfitted with water tanks and pumps.

If the conditions are bad enough, BPA has established protocols to shut down power lines completely, according to a BPA press release. The conditions include a National Weather Service red flag warning combined with winds of 60 miles per hour or higher, or the red flag warning with humidity of 20% or lower, or both.

Habibi said an active wildfire also increases monitoring of BPA lines since heavy smoke can cause a power line to spark.

“If there’s an active fire we are watching conditions,” she said. “If there’s heavy smoke in an area that we think might cause a problem, we’re watching that ahead of time and trying to avoid any fires being started from our equipment.”

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.