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Panelists urge national ignition and near‑miss reporting to improve wildfire risk models
Summary
DOE, USDA, DOI, state regulators and utilities told FERC there is no consistent national ignition reporting system; they proposed protected near‑miss reporting, limited‑access repositories for CEII, and leveraging national labs for data hosting to improve models and lessons learned.
Speakers at the FERC technical conference identified ignition reporting and cause‑code consistency as a major gap blocking better national fire risk modeling.
"There's currently no central database for ignition reporting," said Katie Jeresa, Assistant Secretary for Electricity at the Department of Energy, describing how inconsistent investigations and confidentiality concerns prevent useful trend analysis. Panelists said near‑miss reporting that protects reporters from routine punitive action would allow root‑cause analysis and rapid spread of lessons across utilities.
State regulators noted existing frameworks — for example, California and Oregon reporting rules — that capture some events, and argued those state programs could inform a broader approach. Several speakers suggested options for secure storage and controlled access to sensitive grid topology and ignition data, including hosting with DOE or national laboratories under memoranda of understanding to protect CEII while enabling researchers and responders to work from the same data.
Panelists cautioned that liability regimes and long investigations mean cause codes are often delayed or withheld; they recommended designing reporting to separate learning‑oriented near‑miss capture from investigations that feed liability processes.
Commissioners asked agencies and industry to develop practical proposals for secure collection, protected sharing and standard measures to support NERC and FERC review and the NERC best‑practices deliverable.
