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Idaho Power details line hardening, pole wraps and expanded monitoring to reduce wildfire risk
Summary
Idaho Power outlined mitigation measures including vegetation management, 772 pole fire-mesh wraps in 2025, 82 miles of circuit hardening (2025), expanded weather stations and cameras, and large-scale inspections to limit wildfire starts and outage scope.
Idaho Power presented its 2025–2026 mitigation and monitoring program to the Local Emergency Planning Committee, listing vegetation management, pole fire-mesh wraps, transmission and distribution hardening, selective undergrounding, weather stations, wildfire-detection cameras, and drone inspections.
Presenter Jacklyn Black said the utility serves more than 640,000 customers across Idaho and parts of Montana and described balancing safety improvements with customer rate impacts. She summarized 2025 operational metrics: about 82 miles of circuit hardening, 16 miles of line modifications/undergrounding, 772 pole wraps in 2025, 85 new fire weather stations, and more than 7,000 transmission and 30,000 distribution inspections.
Black said the company is using a 12-year historical dataset and the TechnoSilva model, supported by atmospheric scientists, to refine risk modeling and that segmentation and targeted hardening aim to limit outage scope during wildfire conditions.
