Southern California Edison’s Wildfire Mitigation Plan Leverages Grid Innovations to Advance Community Safety

By: Southern California Edison via Business Wire

May 16, 2025 at 16:28 PM EDT

Three-year plan provides blueprint for expanded public safety measures

Today, Southern California Edison submitted its 2026-2028 Wildfire Mitigation Plan (WMP) to California’s Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety. The plan builds on ongoing efforts to address immediate and long-term wildfire risks in response to evolving community needs and extreme weather events.

“We developed our three-year plan with a layered defense strategy to help safeguard our communities against wildfire threats,” said Steven Powell, president and CEO of SCE. “The heartbreaking January wildfires in Southern California underscore the importance and urgency in advancing mitigations and using new tools to increase infrastructure resiliency and safety. While wildfire risk can never be fully eliminated, we continue to harden the grid and invest in innovative approaches to bring us as close to zero as possible.”

SCE anticipates an investment of $6.2 billion over three years to achieve the WMP, which calls for installation of at least an additional 440 circuit miles of covered conductor and at least 260 circuit miles of underground distribution lines. The company also seeks continued support for aerial firefighting assets throughout the service area, including the world’s largest helitankers with nighttime firefighting capabilities.

“With drought conditions across the state, we are preparing for another busy year,” said Brian Fennessy, fire chief of the Orange County Fire Authority. “The intensity of recent fires is a reminder of how important it is to hit fast and hard – and how devastating it can be if we don’t react quickly. Having dedicated aerial resources funded by SCE allows us to respond swiftly and effectively to wildfires, securing the tools and support needed to protect lives and property.”

Enhanced Technology Driving Safety

The 2026-2028 WMP includes new and expanded tools and methodologies to improve safety, reliability and efficiency. Highlights include:

Rapid Earth Fault Current Limiter: Immediately detects ground faults and reduces voltage when a line contacts the ground while maintaining service through remaining lines for customers.
AI and Machine Learning Detection: Advanced models to improve grid inspections and identify maintenance needs, with faster, more accurate diagnostics and enhanced quality control.
Vegetation Management via Remote Sensing: LiDAR and satellite imagery for precise, proactive and effective vegetation monitoring and management to help prevent ignitions.
Alternative Undergrounding Approaches: Protected lines installed at ground level instead of traditional undergrounding (i.e., trenching into the ground), allowing SCE to perform grid hardening work more quickly and cost effectively.
Early Fault Detection Expansion: Expand this grid “health monitoring” system to 200 new locations, helping SCE detect equipment failures early.

Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) remain an important tool in wildfire prevention, given the threat of extreme weather events and potential for urban fire spread in Southern California. SCE plans to bolster customer support and outreach to improve safety and lessen the hardship of PSPS events.

“PSPS saves lives,” said Jill C. Anderson, executive vice president and chief operating officer for SCE. “During the windstorm this past January, we identified nearly 90 potential ignition sources in the storm’s aftermath that were prevented because the lines were deenergized due to PSPS. We continue to make investments in critical safety measures, such as covered conductor and fast-acting fuses that prevent potential ignitions across the high fire risk sections of our service area.”

Additional new and expanded measures in the WMP include enhancements in transmission resiliency, such as more structure brushing, proactive splice shunting and subtransmission grid hardening. Other wildfire mitigation plans include increasing undergrounding efforts, integrating climate change scenarios into risk models and using AI for HD camera data feeds to assess real-time conditions of a fire. The plan continues SCE’s foundational wildfire mitigations, such as installation of covered conductor, and more frequent equipment inspections and trimming of vegetation that could potentially contact power lines and lead to ignitions.

“SCE’s wildfire mitigation strategy continues to evolve as we balance cost, reliability and safety while pioneering innovative technologies to protect communities from wildfire risks,” added Powell.

Visit sce.com/wildfiremitigation for more information regarding SCE’s Wildfire Mitigation Plan.

About Southern California Edison

An Edison International (NYSE: EIX) company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving a population of approximately 15 million via 5 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within Central, Coastal and Southern California.