As the investigation into the cause of the Eaton Fire continues — potentially sparked by Southern California Edison transmission equipment — many people, from community members to officials to Gov. Gavin Newsom himself, have called for burying a lot more power lines.
The cost, though, can be staggering.
It’s estimated that burying power lines in the wake of the wildfires will soar past $860 million. And it’s a cost that will be passed along to ratepayers.
Here in Southern California, there’s no way to eliminate the risk of wildfire — after all, fire has been a part of our landscape for millennia. But as the effects of climate change escalate and we continue to live in areas increasingly prone to catastrophic fire, how much risk are we willing to tolerate? And how much are we willing — and able — to pay to reduce that risk?
It’s a major conundrum with no easy answer.
The electric conundrum
Electricity is a basic necessity of modern life. At the same time, power lines have sparked some of the most destructive and deadly fires in California history.
Then there’s climate change. Experts say the level of fossil fuel pollution we’ve pumped into the atmosphere is making wildfires a lot worse. The January fires were a textbook example of that: record-dry conditions stretched deep into winter, coinciding with the peak of Santa Ana wind season, and well, the rest is tragic history.
The glow of the Eaton Fire seen in the distance.
Matt Dangelantonio
/
LAist
)
To lessen those climate effects, the world’s top scientists agree we need to shift away from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, and instead generate electricity from cleaner sources such as solar and wind, and power everything from cars to buildings with electricity instead of gas.
But all that demand is driving up costs. That’s in no small part a result of needing to upgrade the power grid to prevent wildfires in the first place, while also boosting the amount of electricity the grid can move around as we shift to cleaner energy sources.
We spoke to experts to try to shed some clarity on this complex electric conundrum.
The background on going underground
Burying power lines underground as a way to prevent fire is a relatively recent practice.
Traditionally, power lines were mostly put underground for aesthetic reasons — communities didn’t want to look at lines criss-crossing their streets — or when there simply wasn’t an option to put them aboveground, for example, in extreme environmental conditions.
A utilities crew fixes a power line at the corner of Marengo and Woodbury in Altadena.
Utilities began burying lines to prevent fire in earnest with Pacific Gas and Electric in 2021, said Duncan Callaway, professor of energy and resources at UC Berkeley. The proposal to bury thousands of miles of lines came after the 2018 Camp Fire, which was sparked by PG&E equipment and became the most destructive and deadliest fire in California history. It burned the town of Paradise to ash and killed 85 people.
Calls for burying lines underground have only risen after every catastrophic fire since then.
After the LA wildfires
In the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires, and an executive order from the governor, Southern California Edison has released a plan to bury more than 150 circuit miles of distribution power lines in the footprints of the Palisades and Eaton Fires, primarily in Altadena and Malibu.
SCE was already planning to bury many of the lines burned in Malibu, which are all in high-risk fire areas. In Altadena, the plan includes potentially putting lines underground in areas not designated as high fire risk, but that burned in the Eaton Fire.
The total cost is expected to be between $860 million and $925 million.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has also vowed to go underground with some 4,000 power lines in the Palisades area at a cost of $1 million to $14 million per mile.
The details of these plans are still being developed, but much of the cost to carry them out is likely to increase rates. Both SCE and LADWP say they are looking for state, federal and philanthropic funding to help offset rate increases.
How can power companies prevent fires?
There are four main strategies utilities use to prevent fires sparked by power lines:
- Shutting off the power during high-risk conditions (otherwise known as Public Safety Power Shutoffs). Edison’s policy is to shut off power when winds hit 60 mph. (The utility says winds were at 59 mph at the transmission line that may have caused the Eaton Fire). They also use the emerging tool of “fast-trip” sensors, which shut off power lines automatically during high-risk conditions.
- Vegetation management in high-risk fire zones, including keeping vegetation from growing too close to power lines.
- Hardening power infrastructure with fire-proof and fire-resistant materials, such as replacing wood poles and covering exposed wires. (For example, Southern California Edison has been installing “covered conductors” or coated wires across thousands of miles of high-risk power lines, which reduces the risk of fires sparked by arcing wires.)
- Putting power lines underground, which eliminates the risk of sparking a fire from that equipment and the need to shut off power during risky weather.
When does it make sense to go underground?
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but experts LAist spoke with said burying power lines should be reserved for the highest-risk fire areas.
It doesn’t make sense for every type of power line, either. For example, transmission lines — those huge towers that are the subject of the Eaton Fire investigation — generally are not good candidates for going underground. That’s because they are generally less likely to spark a fire since they’re a lot higher above vegetation. SCE’s plan focuses on putting what are called “distribution” lines underground — the power lines we generally see in our neighborhoods.
Going underground works best “in an area where the risk is really, really high, such that deploying some of the other measures that are lower cost, like depowering lines and vegetation management, are not going to deliver significant risk reductions,” said Meredith Fowlie, a UC Berkeley professor who has studied the costs and benefits of wildfire mitigation by the state’s major utilities. “That’s a judgment call in terms of how much we want to spend to eliminate risk in certain areas.”
Altadena residents walk near the damage of the Eaton Fire.
Fowlie’s research has focused primarily on PG&E territory, where they’ve done cost-benefit analysis for taking power lines underground primarily in more wooded, rural communities, as well as some in the urban-wildland interface.
But defining what’s “high risk” continues to change, especially as human-caused climate change exacerbates California’s already-extreme cycles of fire, flood and drought.
The current SCE plan calls for underground lines in some areas that hadn’t previously been considered high risk. And California’s new fire-hazard maps dramatically increase the number of areas considered high risk in the state. No one — not researchers or utilities — thinks it’s a realistic option to bury every power line in every designated high-risk area.
A map outlines the high risk areas for fire in Altadena.
Brent Jones / NPR
/
Source: California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection; building footprints from Microsoft
)
“Especially living in California, there is this visceral feeling that we should just eliminate wildfire risk, but we can’t do that,” Fowlie said. “And so it is going to be a question of how much risk are we willing to tolerate? How much are we willing to spend to reduce risk?”
Why is the cost to go underground so high?
Southern California Edison estimates it costs between $3 million and $5 million per mile to take a power line underground. To compare, it costs about $700,000 per mile to cover lines with fire-resistant material through Edison’s “covered conductor” program. Installing covered conductors can also be done a lot faster — typically within 16 to 24 months compared with 25 to 48 months or longer for underground projects, said Jeff Monford, a spokesperson for Edison.
The cost for going underground is so much higher and the timeline is longer largely because of all the work involved: you have to dig a trench, coordinate with other underground infrastructure such as sewer systems, and then often redo roads and sidewalks once you’re all done, said Monford.
Southern California Edison workers service a utility pole in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire in Altadena on Jan. 12.
Underground lines don’t have to be maintained as often, but when they do need to be fixed, power outages can last a lot longer and the fix can be more expensive, Monford added.
The costs in Altadena and Malibu, however, shouldn’t be quite as high as moving existing lines underground because most of the infrastructure has burned and needs to be replaced anyway, Monford said.
“ We are able to treat it more similar to how we would treat a brand new development,” Monford said. “We are redoing everything there as opposed to inserting things in different spots and that can make it more cost-effective to do some of the undergrounding.”
Since the Thomas and Woolsey Wildfires in 2017 and 2018, SCE has put more than 40 miles of power lines underground at a cost of about $110 million to date. How it will affect our rates is currently going through the regulatory process, but if approved, would raise the average residential customer’s bill by about 10%.
On average, carrying out wildfire mitigation strategies contributes to a significant chunk of our bills — about 10%, according to Edison.
What goes into the average SCE electric bill.
A lesson from PG&E and ‘fast trip’ sensors
In a study by Callaway and Fowlie, they found what they believe might be a cost-effective alternative to some underground projects.
Their study found that installing “fast trip” sensors on high risk power lines reduced fires started by power lines by as much as 80% and is less expensive than putting lines underground (but the power still goes out). The “fast trip” sensors work by automatically shutting off power lines when conditions become particularly risky.
”We’re not suggesting that we shouldn’t be putting power lines underground,” Fowlie said. “Especially as wildfire risk is escalating, there will be areas where that’s absolutely the right step to take. But this innovation changes the calculation when we’re thinking about which areas it’s cost-effective to put lines underground.”
When it comes to safety and reliability, undergrounding lines has plenty of positives: For one, it eliminates the risk of ignitions and prevents the need to shut off power during high-risk situations. But Callaway said the cost is enormous.
“I think customers should be open to alternatives,” Callaway said.
What other options are there?
Power shutoffs, which no one likes either.
But there are ways to ease the pain of shutting off the power during risky fire weather.
Enter: solar and battery storage.
SCE briefly mentions in its plan to underground power lines that their investments in the rebuild would also go towards building “microgrids” with solar and battery storage in locations such as schools, libraries and other community spaces where people could ride out power outages, as well as the homes of medically-vulnerable customers.
More solar and battery storage reduces the disruption of power shutoffs, and possibly the need to go underground as much with power lines, said Fowlie.
“We do have technologies that can help households and communities weather that kind of reliability impact during red flag days,” Fowlie said.
To be clear, that’s not a cheap option either — the state is currently grappling with how rooftop solar is affecting our electricity bills, and installing solar along with a battery is more expensive than solar alone.
”It comes back to this question about utilities, customers, and regulators being very careful and deliberate about what is the quality of power supply that they want in extreme conditions when wildfire risk is high,” said Callaway. “So battery storage is one really important thing. It’s also really important to be thinking beyond the power lines and about the vegetation surrounding the communities that are at risk.”
Meaning, prescribed burning and other types of vegetation management. (That can look very different in different places. See our coverage on that in the context of the LA fires here.)
The fact is, the necessary work to harden our power grid, shift to cleaner energy sources and mitigate wildfire all has a cost, and tradeoffs.
“ We do have tools in the toolkit,” Fowlie said. “As we confront what it would really cost to underground all of the distribution lines that are in high risk areas, we have to be scrutinizing very carefully those trade-offs.”