Breaking Down PG&E’s Plan to Use Power Outages to Prevent Wildfires

GreenTech Media:  Pacific Gas & Electric filed its state-mandated 2019 wildfire safety plan last week. The $1.5 billion to $2 billion plan proposes to clear vegetation, inspect power lines, install sensors and cameras, and otherwise invest in efforts to prevent a recurrence of the deadly wildfires that pushed the Northern California utility into bankruptcy.

But perhaps the most controversial part of PG&E’s plan (PDF) is to dramatically expand the scope of planned grid outages, which are intended to pre-empt the risk of its grid sparking more deadly wildfires this summer, and the disruptions and dangers those blackouts could cause.

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