SACRAMENTO – The Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety (Energy Safety) today released its evaluation and approval of Bear Valley Electric Service’s (BVES) 2025 Wildfire Mitigation Plan (WMP) Update.
Energy Safety found that BVES has continued to integrate new technologies to improve its risk methodology, vegetation management assessments, and situational awareness. BVES also reported notable progress on the Radford Line upgrades, having secured permits with the U.S, Forest Service and realizing advancement on an important wildfire mitigation project in a high fire threat district.
Overall, BVES has 10 areas for continued improvement and is required to demonstrate progress in its 2026-2028 WMP submittal. These include reporting on covered conductor project prioritization, processes for quality checks, evaluations of efficiencies found in new programs, and transparency in risk trade-off in risk mitigation selection.
Energy Safety expects BVES to effectively implement its wildfire mitigation activities to reduce the risk of utility-related ignitions and to ultimately achieve the elimination of utility-caused catastrophic wildfires in California.