California hired a consultant to monitor PG&E’s wildfire safety woes. Here’s what it found

PG&E Corp.’s efforts to improve wildfire safety continue to run into headwinds, including aging equipment, damaged power poles and hazardous trees that went undetected by the utility’s crews, according to a consulting firm hired by California officials.

In addition, consultant Filsinger Energy Partners said PG&E’s progress on wildfire safety is being hindered by the global supply chain crisis, which is making it harder for the utility to find replace infrastructure and equipment that are growing obsolete. Filsinger’s report to the Public Utilities Commission was released Monday afternoon.

The commission hired the Denver-based consultant as part of PG&E’s plan to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2020 — a bankruptcy prompted by the company’s struggles to contend with billions of dollars in liabilities caused by a flurry of massive wildfires.

The report released Monday is the first of several Filsinger will write. The report doesn’t make sweeping conclusions but found some of the same shortcomings in PG&E’s fire safety efforts that a court-appointed inspector discovered last year. For example, Filsinger found trees, apparently overlooked by utility inspectors, that “are dead/dying and have the potential to strike PG&E facilities.” It also found damaged power poles and other equipment problems that hadn’t been discovered by the company.

On the other hand, it said some of PG&E’s safety efforts appear to be paying off, including a decision last year to dial up circuit breakers in fire-prone areas, making them more likely to automatically shut off if brushed by a tree limb. The decision “reduces fire risk at the cost of increasing the number of outages and affected customers,” the report said.

Still, the company has lingering troubles on its system.

The report said some of PG&E’s equipment is “significantly older than the related industry average,” the report said. For instance, the consultant found substations that are 60 years old — or about 20 years older than the industry average.

Supply chain woes are upsetting PG&E’s plans to modernize its grid and reduce fire hazards, according to the Fislinger report.

For example, “lead times for certain transformers have increased from 38 weeks to approximately 38 months,” the report said.

Aging infrastructure can be catastrophic. The 2018 Camp Fire ignited when a worn-out clamp, called a C-hook, failed on a high-voltage transmission line northeast of Paradise. This allowed a live wire to brush against the transmission tower, showering the dry ground below with sparks. Officials with the Butte County district attorney’s office determined that hook had been wearing down for nearly a century, a problem that was ignored by inspection crews.

PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of felony manslaughter in the Paradise fire, which destroyed about 12,000 homes. The company also has been blamed for last year’s Dixie Fire, the largest fire in terms of acres burned. More recently, the company is the target of a criminal investigation into September’s Mosquito Fire in Nevada and Placer counties.

“We welcome the oversight provided by the Independent Safety Monitor team,” the company said Monday. “We agreed to this structure when we emerged from Chapter 11 in 2020, believing it would bring additional transparency to our critical safety work.

“As we have shared previously, PG&E’s new leadership team has intensified its focus on fostering an environment that encourages coworkers to raise concerns on any topic, especially around safety and risk, so that we can address things that need to be fixed or made safe. The monitor team helps to build upon this culture and brings an enhanced level of openness and transparency to our efforts to provide safe and reliable energy in the face of evolving climate and wildfire risk.”