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Pacificorp pilots drones, infrared and satellite data; outlines enhanced safety settings and incident tracking
Summary
Pacificorp told regulators it is piloting drone and infrared inspections, testing satellite data for vegetation management, and is advancing an enhanced safety settings program that ranks circuits for mitigation; it also reported improvements to wildfire incident reporting and a materials failure process.
SISKIYOU/MODOC/SHASTA COUNTIES — Pacificorp told a July 2025 Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety workshop that it is expanding inspection technologies and data systems to support its 2026–2028 base wildfire mitigation plan. The utility said current inspection work relies on patrol, detailed and intrusive inspections and that it is layering drone and infrared detection where appropriate. "Our line patrolmen are licensed drone pilots and have that on them," said Michael Timbs, who described both vehicle‑based ground infrared for distribution and helicopter infrared for transmission.
Pacificorp said it is piloting satellite remote sensing and a vegetation‑management pilot in Oregon and Utah to assess how span‑level satellite chlorophyll detection and other remote data could be transferred to service areas in northern California. ‘‘We are currently in the data collection phase of the pilot project and are working with our vendor to review GIS data of our assets within the project area,’’ said Brian King, director of vegetation management support. Deliverables for the pilot were expected in September 2025.
The company described an Enhanced Safety Settings (ESS) program (previously called Elevated Fire Risk settings) that modifies protections and reclosing behavior by circuit during high‑risk days. Jonathan Connolly, director of real‑time engineering, said Pacificorp ranks circuits by outages, customer‑minutes lost and the number of meteorology wildfire risk days to identify worst performers. The company reported recent steps to add asset‑condition data (high‑impedance fault indicators and other conditions) into inspection feeds, and is developing dashboards to automate ranking updates. "When possible we do try to coordinate these projects with existing circuit hardening projects such as expulsion fuse replacement or covered conductor installation programs," Connolly said.
On incident documentation, Pacificorp described a revised wildfire incident response form rolled out in Q3 2024 and automated ingestion of incident attributes into Foundry (Palantir) for a staged "landing zone" used to validate incidents and support future trend analysis. "We rolled this out in Q3 2024 and this significantly improved the fire incident data collection process," said Chase Talbot, director of asset performance. Pacificorp also maintains a materials‑failure database and a process for follow up investigations and manufacturer engagement, which company engineers said was not initially designed to produce automatic failure‑rate statistics but has informed corrective actions.
Pacificorp said it has not yet committed to microgrid or DER programs specifically for PSPS or ESS mitigation in California WMPs, although the company evaluated pilots previously and said it would consider microgrid concepts going forward. The utility also said it is evaluating distribution infrared inspection pilots and considering planned drone inspection cycles, beyond the current on‑demand and patrol uses, subject to FAA approvals for beyond‑visual‑line‑of‑sight flights.
Why it matters: Pacificorp operates about 47,000 customers across more than 11,000 square miles in northern California counties where 63 percent of territory lies in Tier 2 or Tier 3 high fire threat districts; improvements to inspection, incident tracking and ESS targeting may change how the company prioritizes mitigation spending and outage impacts.
What’s next: Pacificorp indicated pilot results will be published (pilot deliverables were expected in September 2025) and that stakeholders can file WMP comments per the docket schedule.
