Electrical utilities with customers across New Mexico are working quickly — and often at great expense — to prevent their power lines from sparking wildfires, according to presentations officials gave Thursday to the Public Regulation Commission.
The PRC, which regulates utilities, asked the providers to present their wildfire mitigation plans and answer questions about the upcoming wildfire season.
Amid increasingly hot and dry weather, the risk of trees falling onto power lines and igniting wildfires has prompted utilities, including both investor-owned ones like PNM and small rural electrical cooperatives, to invest heavily in wildfire-detection technology and fireproof materials.
Company leaders, in the day-long hearing, described new mapping software that can identify high-risk areas; artificial intelligence-enabled cameras that detect wildfire starts instantaneously; and their ongoing efforts to replace wooden power poles with ones made of steel, equipped with non-exploding fuses and guards to prevent trees or wildlife from contacting live wires.
Utility leaders are also increasingly preparing to implement pre-emptive power shutoffs during periods of acute fire weather, according to their presentations Thursday, to prevent their power lines from being responsible for ignitions, potentially leaving thousands of customers without electricity for days until power can safely be restored.
PNM implemented one such shutoff across the state last year in the Las Vegas area and, earlier this year, rolled out a new alert system for wildfire-prone areas in the state. No other utility on Thursday indicated it had done its own “public safety power shutoff,” but several described their systems for deciding when to implement one, along with steps they’re taking to ensure medically vulnerable customers and hospitals have as much advance warning as possible.
Throughout the hearing, PRC Commissioner Greg Nibert asked utilities repeatedly about how much they anticipated spending on prevention measures over the next few years. He told Source NM after the meeting that he expects utilities will pass the costs of fire prevention onto customers, at a time when utility costs are already rising.
“People keep asking us why their utility bills keep going up,” he said. “There’s a variety of reasons, but this is one of the areas that traditionally, maybe, has not been receiving the investment that has been needed, and now you’re having to make those investments.”
In addition to the environmental and human costs of wildfires, utilities are also concerned about being sued for wildfires. The fear is particularly acute for rural electrical cooperatives that often operate on thin profit margins in markets that investor-owned utilities won’t enter, said Vincent Martinez, CEO of the New Mexico Rural Electric Cooperative association.
The Jemez Electrical Cooperative faced one such lawsuit recently after a tree located outside the property it controls fell onto a powerline.. Since paying a $25 million settlement, the cooperative has to pay twice as much for insurance that covers far less than before the fire, he said.
Martinez told commissioners that the cooperatives have even greater concern about lawsuits after the Legislature failed to enact House Bill 267, which would have protected utilities from some liability as long as they demonstrate in advance they had taken steps to prevent hazard trees from falling on power lines.
Martinez said he hopes the failed legislation will form the “base” of a bill carried forward into the 60-day legislative session next year.
“I think we’re the only state in the West that hasn’t had some type of fire mitigation legislation in the last few years,” he told commissioners.
NM’s fire season begins
New Mexico now sits firmly in the midst of wildfire season, with multiple blazes burning across the state.
The Unified Fire in Valencia County has grown to more than 300 acres and is 25% contained. The blaze is threatening more than 35 structures, according to an update Thursday from New Mexico State Forestry.
The Mora County Sheriff’s Office also reported “multiple” fires Wednesday burning near Interstate 25 in the northern New Mexico county.
So far this year, 350 wildfires have consumed more than 33,000 acres across the state, according to the Southwest Coordination Center. About 260 of them are deemed human-caused, according to the center.
