SACRAMENTO – Energy Safety today issued its Annual Report on Compliance (ARC) for the approved 2022 Wildfire Mitigation Plan (WMP) Update of PacifiCorp. Energy Safety found that PacifiCorp completed 46 of 58 of its 2022 WMP Update initiatives, including six of the 10 initiatives with the largest allocated expenditure.
However, of the 12 initiatives where PacifiCorp either missed its targets or where Energy Safety could not make a conclusion about compliance, these included critical grid hardening and situational awareness initiatives such as covered conductor installation, pole replacement, and fire threat modeling.
Energy Safety acknowledges that in 2022 PacifiCorp undertook efforts to reduce its wildfire risk, and in many instances, achieved its WMP initiative activity targets. However, on balance, PacifiCorp was largely unsuccessful in executing an actionable, adaptive, and traceable plan for wildfire risk mitigation.
Energy Safety will continue to monitor PacifiCorp’s implementation of its ongoing wildfire mitigation activities and push the company to improve its ability to ultimately eliminate utility-caused catastrophic wildfires in California.
Energy Safety is required to conduct an annual assessment of the electrical corporations’ implementation of their approved WMPs and WMP Updates.
The ARC for Horizon West Transmission was released on Sept. 24. Additional ARCs on approved 2022 WMP Updates for the remaining electrical corporations are scheduled to be released in the coming weeks.