Southern California Edison warns public-safety power shutoffs will continue; outlines hardening, customer programs

Ian Anderson, Southern California Edison’s government affairs representative for the area, told the Thousand Oaks City Council on Aug. 26 that public-safety power shutoffs are expected to occur more frequently and described a mix of infrastructure upgrades and customer programs intended to reduce fire risk and to help residents cope. Anderson said PSPS events occur when the utility “temporarily shuts off power to reduce the risk of a fire caused by that utility’s equipment.” He told the council that decisions to de-energize depend on a combination of factors including strong winds, dry vegetation and low humidity and are based on forecasts and real-time data. The utility presented its local work to harden the grid, reporting about 140 miles of “total hardening” in Thousand Oaks: 114 miles of covered conductor already completed, 22 miles of covered conductor pending and roughly 3.5 miles of targeted undergrounding. Anderson described two specific local projects: the Orchard circuit (about 3.9 overhead miles, roughly 2.5 miles being hardened and about 0.11 miles of targeted undergrounding) and the larger Hooligan project (about 7.18 overhead miles and 3.4 miles slated for targeted undergrounding), both pushed into 2026 for construction timing and coordination with county work. Anderson said covered conductor raises the wind speed threshold for de-energization compared with bare wires: for bare wire circuits SCE considers gusts roughly between 30 and 45 miles per hour; for fully covered conductor circuits the utility used an approximate range of 40 to 58 miles per hour. He also said the California Public Utilities Commission has directed SCE to shift about 400 miles from targeted undergrounding to covered conductor to deliver protections more quickly across its service area. On operations and customer support, Anderson outlined changes intended to reduce outage uncertainty for residents. SCE has extended advance notification from two days to three days, expanded circuit-level information available to call-center staff, simplified the outage map viewer on its website, and received Federal Aviation Administration approval for beyond-line-of-sight drone inspections to speed “walking the line” safety checks after de-energization. He said community-resilience centers (CRCs) and agreements exist for CRC locations in Thousand Oaks including Grant Brimhall Library and Newbury Park Library and a third location the company maintains in the city. Anderson urged councilmembers to help SCE identify at-risk residents and organizations so the company can enroll them in targeted supports. “If you’re a medical baseline customer, we will fully subsidize your battery backup,” he said, adding that SCE’s marketplace.sce.com lists rebates and vendor options for backup batteries and other resilience products; Anderson cited a $600 rebate on a roughly $1,400 personal generator as an example. Councilmembers focused questions on outage duration, microcircuiting and communications. Councilmember Adam asked why re-energization can continue long after winds abate; Anderson explained that crews must inspect entire de-energized circuits before re-energizing and described the newer drone approach to reduce inspection time. Councilmember Engler pressed about circuit segmentation and “microcircuiting” to limit outage footprints; Anderson said he would follow up with technical details. Several councilmembers and the mayor asked SCE to provide clearer, more geographic outage descriptions (instead of circuit names) and to improve real-time restoration information during incidents. No formal council action was required on the presentation. The item was a briefing and question-and-answer session; councilmembers requested follow-up information on microcircuiting, municipal-scale generator options, and better incident communications. Ending: Anderson closed by repeating SCE’s plea that residents prepare personal plans for PSPS events and by asking the city to help the utility identify vulnerable customers. He offered to coordinate with the city’s emergency operations and to be a direct point of contact during future events.