SACRAMENTO – The Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety (Energy Safety) today released its draft approval of Southern California Edison’s (SCE) 2026-2028 Wildfire Mitigation Base Plan (WMP). Release of the plan initiates a 30-day public comment period.
In its 2026-2028 Base WMP, SCE is continuing to evaluate circuits to reduce PSPS risk and conducted new analyses to target more circuits. SCE also improved its grid hardening and vegetation management strategies and leads in Rapid Earth Fault Current Limiter (REFCL) deployment and asset inspections.
SCE is reducing wildfire risk in high wind conditions through three types of remediation to reduce conductor clashing on its long spans. SCE is also mitigating the risk of aging assets by identifying spans and splices that could cause outages.
There are areas where SCE must improve including the refinement of its risk models and how SCE calculates risk variables. These improvements include greater explanation about SCE’s line removal activities in areas with the highest fire threat, particularly for lines that are de-energized but could come into contact with energized lines, detail into certain types of its fast curve settings, better coordination with Bear Valley Electric Service on an interconnected power line’s infrastructure, and more proactive pole inspections and activity tracking.
Stakeholder comments are due by Jan. 12, reply comments are due by. Jan. 22.