SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
As part of its Community
Wildfire Safety Program, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is
building a network of weather stations to monitor and further advance
its weather forecasting abilities to better predict where a wildfire
could occur so it can respond quickly and appropriately to help keep
customers and communities safe.
Since January of this year, PG&E has added more than 50 new weather
stations, with around 200 total planned to be built and installed across
PG&E’s service area by the end of the year. The newly added stations are
located in Alameda, Butte, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Marin, Napa, Nevada,
Placer, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Sonoma and Tuolumne counties.
Data collected by these stations will be streamed in real time and
available to state and local agencies and the public through online
sources such as NOAA
and MesoWest.
“We saw first-hand last year how extreme weather events driven by
climate change are causing unprecedented and unanticipated wildfires,”
said Kevin Dasso, PG&E vice president of Electric Asset Management.
“Adding new weather stations in high fire-threat areas across our
service area enhances our weather forecasting and modeling to help
bolster wildfire prevention and response efforts and keep our customers
safe.”
Real-Time Data to Assess Fire Danger Conditions
PG&E has historically used weather forecast data for many purposes,
mainly for predicting storm damage and for assessing fire danger. Its
team of meteorologists, which includes fire-weather specialists,
performs daily monitoring of current and forecast weather patterns and
fire threat projections using in-house and publicly available data from
the National Weather Service, CAL FIRE, US Forest Service and more. This
information helps PG&E predict when and where the fire threat will be
high or extreme so additional steps can be taken to keep critical
infrastructure, utility crews and communities safe.
With these new weather stations, PG&E will be able to capture additional
real-time data related to temperature, wind speeds and humidity levels
to provide improved awareness of current fire danger conditions.
PG&E’s meteorologists will feed information to the company’s new Wildfire
Safety Operations Center team to review data and determine any
needed action to help reduce wildfire risks. In the event of extreme
fire danger conditions, one of the actions PG&E may take is temporarily
turning off electricity for safety in specific areas. PG&E is reaching
out to customers who are served by electric lines in extreme fire-threat
areas to let them know about possible power outages during high wildfire
threats so they can take steps to prepare.
These new weather stations are one of the additional precautionary
measures PG&E is putting in place as part of its Community Wildfire
Safety Program, intended to reduce wildfire threats and strengthen
communities for the future. More information can be found at pge.com/wildfiresafety.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E
Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas
and electric energy companies in the United States. Based in San
Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of
the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in Northern and
Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com/
and pge.com/news.
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Pacific Gas and Electric Company
Media Relations, 415-973-5930
Source: Pacific Gas and Electric Company