Liberty Utilities says fast‑trip relays and pole replacements are core of 2026–28 wildfire plan

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Liberty Utilities told the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety during a July 2025 public workshop that its top wildfire‑mitigation priorities for 2026–2028 are systemwide ‘‘sensitive relay profiles’’ (fast‑trip) and extensive pole replacements, alongside continued lidar vegetation inspections and a smart‑meter rollout to improve situational awareness. "We treat our entire system as though it's a high fire threat district," said Eric Schwarzrock, president of Liberty Utilities. "That is what we focus on."

The company said it plans to implement sensitive relay profile (SRP) settings on all capable devices across its distribution system by August 2025 and that recent risk modeling indicated the SRP deployment would cut modeled wildfire risk by 74 percent compared with not having SRP in place. "The risk reduction of having this SRP program implemented across our system versus not having it all at all, it reduced our risk by 74%," said Matt Wetzel, manager of engineering.

Liberty presented a 2026 budget of roughly $36 million for wildfire mitigation work, with about $23 million identified as capital spending and roughly $12 million earmarked for vegetation management. The utility said much of the capital will go to pole replacements (about 400 poles in 2026), covered conductor miles and other overhead hardening. "Our modeling is revealing that pole replacements was gonna be an area where we get the most bang for our buck," Schwarzrock said.

Vegetation management relies on annual lidar flights covering roughly 700 miles of overhead lines, the company said. Eric Oiler, Liberty's vegetation‑management manager, described lidar point‑cloud deliveries and a software pipeline that produces GIS deliverables and work orders for crews. Liberty said it uses action thresholds that exceed minimum clearance requirements so it can trim proactively. Oiler said Liberty began testing satellite imagery and span‑level chlorophyll change detection in 2024 to help pilot tree‑health monitoring, but that satellite methods are still being refined to reduce false positives in dense stands.

Company leaders discussed operations that disable reclosing and progressively prioritize safety over reliability as fire risk increases, moving feeders into "fire season mode," "extreme fire season mode" with fast trips, and, when necessary, public safety power shutoffs (PSPS). They also said a full smart‑meter deployment will be complete by 2026 and will be used for faster outage detection and targeted communications.

In response to public questions, Liberty said the roughly $36 million annual wildfire budget is similar to prior years and is already reflected in current rates, and therefore is not expected to create new upward pressure on customer bills. The company also detailed pre‑PSPS outreach and supports for medical‑baseline and access‑and‑functional‑needs customers, including targeted communications, hotel assistance and temporary generator deployment in some cases.

Liberty said it is evaluating battery and other distributed energy resource (DER) approaches through multi‑utility working groups but has not yet deployed a DER program tied specifically to SRP or PSPS mitigation. Officials also described efforts to increase SCADA coverage of devices, refine relay automation, add more sectionalizing devices to limit the number of customers affected by any single trip, and expand customer education on why fast‑trip settings are used.

Why it matters: Liberty serves a territory in which the utility says 94 percent is in a high fire threat district and told regulators it is using a mix of vegetation work, infrastructure hardening and protective‑device settings to reduce ignition likelihood and consequence. The SRP deployment in particular is presented internally as the single largest modeled near‑term reduction in wildfire risk.

What’s next: Liberty’s presentations and slides are part of the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety’s 2026–2028 base WMP docket. Written opening comments on the Liberty WMP were listed as due Aug. 8, 2025.