The utility also said it will continue installing weather stations and high-definition cameras throughout its coverage area of 70,000 square miles.
PG&E said it also will continue efforts to reduce the size of deliberate power shutoffs that have blacked out hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses for several days during windy weather. That would include installing hundreds of devices to limit power outages, along with microgrids, which use generators to keep the electricity on and providing more crews to make repairs and restore power.
The latest plan follows a year that saw a record 4 million acres burn around the state and the risk continues to grow, PG&E said.
“We are planning around and operating under that assumption,” said Matthew Pender, PG&E’s director of community wildfire safety. “We anticipate fire seasons to continue to be very extreme.”
PG&E’s outdated equipment was blamed for causing a series of wildfires during 2017 and 2018 that killed more than 120 people and destroyed more than 27,000 homes and other buildings. The damage caused PG&E to file for bankruptcy in 2019, opening a legal avenue for the company to negotiate $25.5 billion in settlements with wildfire victims and others.