Transcripts For CSPAN2 Hearing On Wildfires The Electric Grid 20240713

Stop at 11 00 am this morning, weve got a series of votes, ant we are going to observe an actual ten minute clock. Its the first time in senate history, but thats the goal this morning. So we want to be able to hear from everyone this morning, ande have an opportunity for the very, very important conversations regarding this issue. We are here today to discuss the impact of wildfires on the reliability of our electric grid and efforts to mitigate wildfire risk and increase grid resiliency. In recent years, devastating wildfires and related electricity blackouts in california have drawn National Attention to the challenge of maintaining grid resiliency in the face of extreme conditions. Tragically, we remember last years camp fire, the deadliest and most destructive fire inou california history, which incinerated the town of paradise, killed 85 people. Ve state investigators determined that the fire was caused by degraded, 97year old power lines during socalled fire weather, strong winds, low humidity, dry vegetation, and heat. The camp fire was a sobering wakeup call on the inherent risk of maintaining thousands of miles of aboveground power lines across fireprone landscapes. It spurred california regulators and several of the states largest utilities to increase their use of Public Safety power shutoffs, or psps plans, as a precaution against possible wildfire ignitions during high wind events. Intended as a measure of last resort, psps plans call for utilities to deenergize power lines in extreme weather conditions and blackout large portions of their service territory. From june through november, at least nine psps events cut power for more than three million californians. For some, these blackouts lasted a few hours. Others, however, went without power for nearly six days. These blackouts occurred not only in the rugged terrain of Northern California, but also in the greater metro areas of san francisco, san diego, and los angeles county. Repeat scenarios could be with us for a very long time. According to the testimony we will hear today, wildfire blackouts could be californias new normal for the next 10 to 30 years, or even longer. One would expect to see such Living Conditions in a developing county, not in some of the most populated and prosperous places in the United States. And certainly not in a state with some of the highest electricity prices in the nation. This challenge is not limited to california, however. R. Dense vegetation and hazard trees interfering with power lines are not an uncommon cause of wildfires. Neither is degraded Energy Infrastructure. On a national basis, the u. S. Forest Service Estimates that more than 277 fires from 2017 to 2018 can be traced to power lines. Several of the fires that merged into the 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires were started by winddowned power lines. The Great Smoky Mountains wildfires were the deadliest in the eastern u. S. Since the great fires of 1947. In my home state of alaska, some fires in the matsu valley north of anchorage are believed to be connected to power line ignitions in a region with high spruce bark beetle mortality. An investigation is still pending, but a tree falling onto a distribution line is the suspected cause of the mckinley fire this summer, which resulted in the loss of 56 e homes. The danger in alaska, like elsewhere in the nation, is that power lines are necessarily located near homes, schools, and businesses. Climate change, drought, insect infestation, and poor Forest Management have made forest landscapes more susceptible to fire, particularly in the west. As more people build homes in the wildlandurban interface or in dispersed forest communities, the chances for utilityrelated wildfires are sure to increase. In this era of megafires, congress has stepped in to ensure that the federal government is not a roadblock to clearing dense vegetation and hazard trees from utility rightsofway. In 2018, we passed the electric reliability and forestli protection act as part of the 2018 consolidated appropriations act. That law directs federal land managers to expedite the clearing of vegetation within 100 feet of power line corridors on federal land. It is my understanding that both the department of the interior and the Forest Service are now implementing that important measure. Now, we must turn our attention to what can be done to harden our Energy Infrastructure and improve the resiliency of our grid in high firerisk areas during these extreme weather conditions. H this is a complex problem that is going to require collaboration at all levels in partnership with the electric industry. So i thank those of you that have joined us this morning to provide important this important testimony, i thank my colleagues being here, and i will now turn to friend, senator manchin for his comments before we turn to the panel. Thank you so much, chairman murkowski. Before i go to Opening Statements i want to take a moment of personal time if i can. Today will be last meeting of a person whos been with me for quite a long time in my committee. Shes been withmi me in my state office, not the state office, but my d. C. Office. She was my chief counsel there and she moved over when i became Ranking Member as the director of the Ranking Member staff and done a tremendous job. Sarah has a new little baby so sheew now has two little babies and things in life change as times and were just so sorry that she wont be on the committee or working in the committee or leaving the staff that she will always be near and dear to us by her phone, and we will not let her escape too far. So with that, sarah, i want to thank you for all your years of service. [applause] so chairman murkowski, thank you for holding a hearing today on relationship between wildfires and electric grid. Wildfires a threat to Critical Infrastructure including the electric grid but as weve seen in some instances of equipment for use on the grid can also sparked wildfires. This is true for western states. We haves. Seen several catastrophic fires in california but this impacts eastern states, too. In my home state of westt virginia is not been exempted over the thanks to giving weaka fiber in 1300 acres in west virginia. No homes were damaged but other communities across the country have not been so lucky. Over the last few years california has been extremely hardhit by wildfires and the impacts have been truly devastating. Last year the campfire camp fie killed 85, destroyed 14,000 homes in the town of paradise. I appreciate mr. Bill johnson president Pg E Corporation being here today and willing to talk about his Companies Understand of the mistakesmp that were mad, the Lessons Learned and operational changes pg e is making to ensure this never happens again. Wildfires are increasing iny, intensity, size and frequency and we will need a new approach to mitigate their devastating impacts and ensure electricity in startingre is the fires. They also are getting harder to control due to Climate Change, lack of Forest Management and new Housing Developments in rural fire prone areas. This is affecting millions of people. I look for viewing from a panel about available technologies and Management Practices and what Innovative Solutions are needed to reduce risk and cost to the department of energy and our National Labs including in my home state are working on modernizing electric grid to make it more we think that we need to make sure this effort is addressing relationship between wildfires and the grid both in terms of wildfires impacting the grid and also electricity infrastructure igniting wildfires. There is no Silver Bullet but we cant and should look to learn from utilities that it made their grids the most resilient to wildfires that that the best mens programs and the best service delivery. This goes for maintenance and inspection practices installations of new and improvedls technologies to detet problems early, Risk Mitigation like tree trimming or bearing powerlines and the energizing powerlines as a last resort. Of course a last resort shutting off the power which pg e of utilities have done proactively several times in recent months during unusual high winds. I can imagine how disruptive that was the millions of customers and businesses that in every day on electricity you provide. I hope you will explain to us today why that was a step he took in this particular circumstances and how effective they were. I understand thank you, madam chair of the pg e power shutoffs, 218 instances of wind damage were discovered. 24 of which would likely have started wildfires if you have not takenak precautionary actio. So the shuttle may prevent a civil fires but also came at great cost. It raises the question, if were to shut off the power, how quicr you in with the causes the least harm to customers . Finally i lookt for doing from the witnesses about ways that congress can be helpful. I know we took a big step forward by including the provision in the 2010 o omnibus bill to make it easier for you chose to do the required maintenance, especially for the somalia role of electrical coops. I welcome your thoughts on additional actions we can take to make it easier to clean up and marry after wildfire including making use of some of the timber from the trees killed by the fire before the timber rots. It makes no sense to me at all. We want to avoid the devastation caused by wildfires and have reliable electric grid to power our homes and our businesses. In the face of increasing wildfire risk, we need to do everything we can to manage and reduce these rising risks. I look forward r to ring from te witnesses and what they havero o say about howha to do that. So thank you, chairman and i thank all of our witnesses for coming and making the effort to be a a today. Thank you, senator manchin. We will begin with our panel this morning. Again, thank you to each of you for being here and thebu contributions that you will make to this very important discussion. The panel will be laid off this morning by mr. Bill johnson, mr. Johnson is ceo and president for Pg E Corporation. I note thatt this has been a vey difficult time for you, for all within pg e family. It is, it has been a significant challenge, and i know you have made every effort to be open and as you deal with this and share these Lessons Learned, so we are very appreciative youre here with us this morning. Dr. Michael wara is also with us, Senior Research scholar at stanford woods and find for the Stanford Woods Institute for the department. Mr. Scotts going is executive director for the northwest Public Power Association. Appreciate your contribution. Carl imhoff is the manager for the electricity market sector at one of our fabulous National Labs at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. We are thankful you here. And the panel will be rounded off by dr. Don russell, a professor and director of the Power System Automation Laboratory at the department of electrical and Computer Engineering at texas a m university. So we appreciate you being here. We would ask you to try to keep your comments to about five pins. Your full statements will beil included as part of the record and didnt live an opportunity for the back and forth. Mr. Johnson, welcome. Thank you so much comfortably. Im bill johnson president andoo ceo of Pg E Corporation. I appreciate invitation to be here and the Committee Interest in wildfires and impacts to electric grid reliability and resilience. As has been mentioned, and california and throughout thehe west weve seen a dramatic increase in wildfires are as result of a changing climate which interns has to medical effects on our electric system and howec we operate. Just seven years ago, 15 of our service area was designated as having elevated fire risk. That number is over 50 today and it will continue to grow. So in seven years the risk of fire more than tripled for our service area in Northern California and california is also expense this post restrictive wildfires in the past two years and its deadliest. Pg e is give peace are for the role thatso our equipment had in the first and the losses that occurred. We have taken action to prevent it from ever happening again. We invested over 30 billion and our electric system over the last decade including more than 3 billion in Vegetation Management. And today were taking that work a step further by increasing Vegetation Management and the high risk areas, incorporating analytical and predictive capabilities, and c expanding te scope and intrusiveness of our inspection processes. This year we inspected every element of our electric system within the high threat fire areas, examined almost 730,000 structures 30,000 structures and 25 million discrete related components in about four monster we do put 600 weather stations and 130 highresolution cameras across our service area to bolster Situational Awareness and emergency response. We are using satellite data and modeling techniques to predict wildfires spread and behavior, and we are hardening our system in those areas where the fire threat is highest by installing stronger and more resilient polls and covered lines as well as underground. Did she we took the unprecedented step of intentionally turning off power for safety during a string of severe wind events where we saw hour winds on an short in Northern California. This decision affected millions of our customers, cause them description disruption and hardship even as it succeed in the goal of protecting human life. The nature of this risk at the potential consequence of it requires to plan, operate and maintain our system differently though ever have and this will require a focus on resilience as well as reliability. Thats one of the lessons that is applicable beyond california and the committee has noted this. The this. The resilience and reliability are relateded but distinct concepts. Our customers including Critical Infrastructure and First Responders have long depended on Reliable Service, but today more than ever our ability to provide Reliable Service depends on a comprehensive societal approache to resilience. Congress addressed reliabilityco through section 215 of the federal power act nearly 15 years ago. Congress can address resilience now to potential actions that include directing d. O. E. To develop a framework and process for economic costbenefit analysis, increased eligibility and funding for existing Energy Assistance and Community Resilience programs, support research and development of new technologies and forwardlooking data, and promoting publicprivate partnerships to establish voluntary resilience zones and building codes and standards. Specific to addressing the wildfire threat, we believe the federal government should continueer its focus on funding Forest Management and Fire Suppression activities, implementing forest in Vegetation Management policies advanced by senator daines and others, ensuring access to federal lands for prevention and response, and authorizing federal agencies to share satellite data for wildfire detection. We of course know that addressing this risk muster with us and in her own operations and thats what were focused on safety and riskbased approach to mitigating the dynamic risk facing this company and industry. Let me conclude by saying that pg e remains committed to doing everything in our power to build a better and safer future for all. Thats what our customers deserve. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you mr. R. Johnson. Doctor ware, welcome. [inaudible] sorry. Senator murkowski, senator manchin, thank you very much for having me before the committee to discuss this issue. There are real present threats to the Transmission System present by wildfire. Elise and the a california contt these threats are a significant questions regarding how and if the element of the Transmission System across the high threat and they should be operated during increasingly common and increasingly dangerous late fall dry, high wind events. As bill johnson just discussed, pg e has faced enormous threats to its system and has really for the first time this a year used widespread Public Safety power shutoffs as a tool to create safety, and as you mentioned in your opening remarks, this is not just an issue for rural or remote parts of california but i really directly impacts millions of people in the metro areas in california as well. The use of psps as both preventive wildfire and cause widespread disruption families and businesses, especially in Northern California. Psps the bands that they do dramatically improve safety are very costly to the health of the economy, especially in smaller communities. My best estimate using Tools Development Berkeley Laboratory indicate psps defense costs customers more than 10 billion. Failure of transmission components during high winds is not a new phenomenon in california. Ur the wildfire that to managing utility cost wildfire risk the 2010 which fire in San Diego County was caused byis transmission line failure. Similarly the camp fire was ignited by failure of a transmission line and this year and perhaps most concerning of all, failure of a jumper on eight to 30 kb line in the geysers appear to have caused the kincaid fire. One kincaid fire was superbly n managed by the administration, they couldve resulted in property lost at least as large as the tubs and camp fire the came before it. In addition, theres at least a suggestion that two fires in Southern California were potentially cause caused by Transmission System failures this year. Ia i would emphasize that the 2019 fires are still very much under investigation. We dont fully understand the t causes but there are strong suggestion of vulnerability in the Transmission System. Prior to this year comprehensive assets with relatively limited. Mostly involved lower voltage, transmission lines that were much older. The failures we observe they should indicate even the higher voltage lines that provide bulk system reliability may bety vulnerable during high wind events. It would seem prudent basin recent experience to consider include all of these lines perhaps except the very highest voltage lights in the psps protocols, and that is potentially significant ramifications for bulk systemot reliability in california and, in fact, be on the high wildfire threat areas. Currently, california regulators and utilities are engaged in urgent examination of inspection testing protocols for these critical components to understand why the failures are occurring. They kincaid, the tao that may cause the kincaid fire was inspected at least four times over the last 24 24 months, ant it failed. We need to understand why and understand what mitigating actions we could take to ensure bulk system reliability is maintained even through psps events. All this raises importantnt questions about how to approach bulk system maintenance and operations moving forward areasg facing significant wildfire threat. Traditionally, somee risk and mechanical fitter was acceptable for the systems because the failures occurred during wet winter storms but today in california at least the failure great managers worry about is mechanical failure when it is windy, dry, and the fuels are cured. These conditions are highly intolerant of any failure of the bulk Transmission System to operate properly, and thisly change in the consequence of failure mode means that tolerance for errors has to be much lower than the Cost Effective approach to develop during the 20th century. Moreover, best available science of whether climate conditionss indicate this problem will get worse not better. It is likely to spread beyond california into a broader impact on the western United States. The the legislature and Governor Newsom has worked relatively successfully over the last year to reduce the perceived and Financial Risks of these impacts on customers on the utilities and on the victims of fires. I would point to passage of the Wildfire Fund t legislation this summer which provided a possible exit for pg e out of bankruptcy and also help stabilize credit ratings. I think we all have to focus on affordability and costeffectiveness of the strategy as a look to the future. Affordability is key as we maintain safety and reliability of the system and thats going to require very smart and very targeted investment in the electricity system. Its going to require much more sophisticated approaches to management and quantification of variance in the system performance so the problems can begin be identified and fixed before a disaster strikes. And as well as alluded to it were require collaboration between local property owners, local, state, and federal governments and wild land Fire Fighters in reducing fuel and so the consequences are less. Im hopeful the Lessons Learned in california over the past several years, catastrophe can be fruitful for other western wn states as a wildfire threats both from the electric system and other causes increases due d to Climate Change. Thank you. Thank you, doctor. Mr. Corwin, welcome. Thank you, chairman murkowski, Ranking Member manchin and members of the committee for holding this hearing today. In an industry so dedicated to safety, reliability and affordability for our customers, wildfire stands out as a major threat to all three principles and its something that demands our best collaborative effort. The northwest Public Power Association is comprised of 158 consumer owned electric utilities across the Western Region with lan that is mostly under federal ownership in many places, and were many of the largest wildfires occur. If you live in these areas sooner or later you, your family, your friends are impacted. Its very real in these areas. In fact, my fatherinlaw was a smokejumper in the 1960s in oregon, still lives in northern nevada where wildfires reached their suburban neighbors. For public park communities even one life harmed by this threat is too many. And fire is one of the greatest risk to the Financial Stability of our members and solvency, and it threatens their ability to provide the basic electricity service. They have mobilized analyze their gaps and needs, some implement plans that include dozens of actions on topics like enhanced inspections come operational practices, Situational Awareness, Vegetation Management, system hardening, circuit reclosing and others you will hear about today. We thank you and congress for your work, and this all takes funny so we thank you for stabilizing sr destabilized the federal funding. Its an important part of this equation and now its important that we prioritize that funding and get the best bang for the buck to this important cause. Our members of the best way to suppress or avoid fire is limited the fuel or ignition in first place. Unfortunately delays in removing trees or in widening corridors that are no longer wide enough come have exasperated the risk of catastrophic wildfire. Some ofic her members, 80 of te land is owned by the federal government. Effective management of thesean lands demands a True Partnership between federal agencies and the utilities need approvals to maintain those rights away. To that end we thank you for passing the amendment for the federal land policy and Management Act to promote federal consistency accountability and timely decisionmaking. Now were looking forci consistent, donated, quick and limitation of this law. T we appreciate the u. S. Forest service recent issued a proposal on this. We note just this week an update to my written testimony that blm has issued instructional memos to the state offices in the western we will review these brief memos but they peer to set a tone of compliance with the laws as congress intended which is encouraging. Still we highlight several things that the agencies move forward to ensure great safety reliability and resilience. We need coordinated consistent guidelines that eliminate the need for casebycase approvals for routine operations and control of hazard trees. We would like to see a culture of responsiveness. With many good relationships with a hardworking employees at blm and a Forest Service. They share of good stewardship of federal lands. Some more consistent standards, timelines and collaboration with operators is great for all sides and the utmost importance, and it starts with culture. We urge full use of Agency Discretion to identify the categorical exclusion to the lengthy processes under the national of our mental policy act for routine and regular work for hazard tree removal. We need more training for agency Staff Special on electrical system knowledge and we ready to provide it as the law outlines. We would like to see a straightforward implementation of the provision allowing quick action on hazard trees. This is really filed to Decisive Action to protect people in our Electrical Systems and the support with the implementation of the very sensible provisions in the act on the liability. Theres been a lot of uncertainty and theres also layers at the state and local level that utilities need to comply with and that create risk. Even when theres no indication a utility cost an event, sometimes to receive an invoice from a state or federal agency for damages even years afterwards without process. Im glad to answer any questions or provide Additional Information to the record at your request and thank you for having this hearing and having me here today. Thank you. Mr. Inhofe, welcome. Good morning and thank you. Chairman murkowski, Ranking Member manchin and for the opportunity to join the session today. Im carl inhofe and i lead the grid at the National Laboratory in Washington State and the chair of the good lab c consortium. Led by pnl that work with industry, state partners to support the deweys grid mode modernization. And theres rell resilience for Cyber Resilience for the three quarters of the energy in the United States and High Performance sensors and the resilience that we need for the future. Today id like to offer three points for the wildfire issues focused on the session. Number one the strategy is focused on r d for reliability and hazards for the modern grid. Industry and dewey are systematically looking at r d that support the wildfire activity and ill share some of the details. And thirdly, the nation has the opportunity, i believe, moving forward to leverage the industry thats been discussed so far in the session and to inform new planning and operational scenarios to better respect wildfire threats in all aspects how the system is planned and operated going into the future. For clarity, i use the National Academy of engineering definition of resilience as avoiding outages in the first place, and then minimizing the breadth and duration of outages if and when they do actually occur. To the first point, the grid modernization focuses on reliability and grill resilience, enable operators and states and communities to address wildfire risk and all hazards in this case, means human threats like cyberi attack and normal system risks of equipment failures. Three topics within the portfolio are most relevant to wildfire. Thirdly the realtime operational and response tools to support operations during wildfire events. The sensing tools are foundational, detecting failures and realtime tools to mitigate that risk. They leverage some of the data assets and the Machine Learning concepts provide the capacity to analyze ultra large, high velocity grid data streams on the modern grid. Extreme Event Planning tools give system planners, unparalleled capability for extremely large threat scenarios and all hazards. Threat scenarios for the most resilient Design Options in the power system thats getting more variable, more connected at the edge, more interdependent with critical structure and facing more challenging threats. And the realtime operational concepts are providing operators with insights and risk and support thats moving from the paradigm of hours and ahead to the seconds and minutes ahead. And regarding the institute with the results that could support industry preparations for the 2020 fire season. Industry expressed particular interested in to conduct Damage Assessment and awareness and advanced technology to protect against imminent failure. Thirdly, industry expressed interest in data tools and doe to options for industry, excuse me for consideration, a few examples gmlc derived sensors at oakridge and testing at pg e. And assessment at p and l for deployed hurricane. And Forest Service platforms for Biomass Assessment and moisture and the types by p and l and extended to high risk National Forest and range areas in the west. And then lastly, gmlc and response tools from sandia and oak ridge for Situational Awareness and emergency mapping. Finally, the mantel academy of engineering resilience report in 2017 encouraged industry to be more expansive in framing the resilience scenarios against which the grid of the future needs to be designed. I believe that the industry coordination to the role of the subsector council between the public entities can integrate recent wildfire lessons with the agenda to deliver blue ribbon use cases that would enhance industry efforts to mitigate and protect against wildfire. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. Inhofe. Dr. Russell, welcome to the committee. Thank you very much for the invitation to be here. Im here to talk about how to prevent power line wildfires. On a december day, these are examples from real activities. Two power lines clashed and broke the line and christmas, december 25th. The lights went out on hundreds of customers as dinner went into the oven, power was off for others. Arcing metal was thrown off from the conductors and thankfully a fire didnt start that day, but a lot of people missed cooking. What you didnt know is this, that Christmas Day outage was caused by an event that had occurred five times in exactly the same place over the previous four years. That was the fifth time that event had occurred. Until now, no system was available that any utility could use that would automatically provide operators with the information necessary to find and fix the specific problem. Regular inspections by this utility had found absolutely nothing and it had been expected multiple times, in fact, it had been expected explicitly finding why this happened. Repetitive faults that occur one day may start a fire the next time they occur. Sometimes thats years from now and the ultimate failure could have been predicted. Texas a m has anticipation technology and uses intelligence algorithms to monitor circuits in failing devices and operations. The concept is simple. You find it and fix it before the catastrophic fire causes the outage. When a major fault occurs today, utilities have detection equipment that quickly may be in a few hundred milliseconds and deenergizes the power lines, but the fault may have already caused the fire. Thats the best they can do with the equipment that they have. The root cause of that fault may have started days or even weeks and in some cases, years before the catastrophic failure caused the fire. Digital way form analytics can now detect the earliest stages of an arcing device long in advance of catastrophic failure. Instead of waiting to react to the failure, lets find and fix it early. Texas a m researchers monitored over 100 utility circuits for offer 15 years capturing every failure and missed operation on those circuits. Its the largest data base in existence in the world and we now know how the failures occurred and how they can be detected. Let me give you an example, an another example. A failing clamp like this particular clamp right here, which did fail, by the way. Caused a power line to fall to the ground, causing an outage for hundreds of customers, it happened in tennessee. I dont remember if anybody is here from tennessee. The arcing line was a potential mechanism once it hit the ground. What the utility operators did not know for the previous 21 days before the clamp caused the line to fall, an arcing condition had occurred on the clamp 2,333 times. In the last half of that 21 days every one of those arcing conditions represented an ignition mechanism if ground conditions were correct. So for, lets call it an average of 10 days, and something on the order of 1200 arcing events, each one of those had an opportunity to start a fire. With advanced technology, texas a m researchers were able to detect that line clamp that im talking about in the very first moments of the very first day, 21 days before the failure occurred. We were in a blind study. Utility did not know that we were doing this operationally, they let us just go out and put this on the system so we were knowing for 21 days that clamp was arcing. My 1950 chevrolet did not have anything in it that told me that it was broken or going to break. It was broken when it stopped running, all right . And today, weve got a computer under the hood that tells us these things are going to happen to you and sometime you better get in and get this fixed because its going to break your car in a day or two or week or three. In medicine we now use advanced diagnostic equipment that find cancer early so it can be cured long before catastrophe. Weve got an analogy here to the distribution circuits and that is a new tool allowing operators to have Continual Health assessment of all circuits, 24 7, to identify failing devices and fix them before catastrophic failures occur or cause an outage or ka us a fire. Its important to know, extremely important to know, no technology or program is ever going to prevent all fires, thats just not possible, but what we need to do is use every tool that is available to us to prevent every fire that we possibly can because some of those of course are devastating. The reality is this, texas a m university now operating on 20 different utilities with this technology has demonstrated that a new tool can find and fix and diagnose and help you locate many of the things that are actually causing fires. I pull up on my phone, i put in a code, i pull up picture and i will give you that on the vector substation, in australia, on substation a, circuit a, a four operation fault occurred that was 335 amps, replaced itself, reclosed, et cetera, and ultimately ended up closing. It occurred at 7 12. 55. I know more with this technology than operators know in that utility in australia. And im sitting here in washington d. C. This technology is available, its ready to use, and it will prevent some fires. Dr. Russell, thank you. This has been very interesting. Kind of the progression of the testimony here this morning were talking about. Real issues on the ground that have had devastating impact, loss of life and property thats just been, just horrific. And acknowledgment that how we deal with the vegetation and the management side of it, but then to move to the technology that really key in on the prevention is a good, good way to house this discussion before the committee. Mr. Johnson, i want to begin with you and this relates to the situation as it is now, the fact that during this fire season, pg e had to employ the Public Safety power shutoffs to make sure that there was a level of safety. Certainly, it interferes with that reliability that the customer expects, but a reality that sometimes youve got to prioritize between the reliability versus the resilience and again, truly, the safety. Theres nobody on this committee whos from california so i will ask the question that californians probably want to know and that is in terms of impact to customers Going Forward, how long do you anticipate that pg e will have to resort to additional psps events . That i am facts you, dr. Warren, who mentioned the Financial Impact to communiti communities. It is real, its tangible. Very personal, so can you speak to that aspect of the Current Situation . I can give you an estimate. Its hard to be precise about this. I will say that the use of psps goes back to the early 2000s in california and really after fires in 2007 at san diego and gas electric. 12 years later, theyre still doing psps events, but in a very narrow, surgical way. And so, i think for us in Northern California, it will take us probably five years to get to the point where we can largely eliminate this tool. There are a number of things we can do to narrow the scope, narrow the duration. We have better predictive capability, Better Technology that you heard about. So i think over the next couple of years you will see a progression of shorter, fewer psps events. But the Climate Change and the weather change is dramatic enough that i dont think we will see the end of it for some period of time. So i mentioned the situation in alaska with our fires this summer. The lines coming through the Peninsula Area were impacted by that fire in the region and it has limited the ability to move the cheaper Renewable Power from bradley lake hydro all the way up the rail belt to fairbanks. So those who are closer to the source, if you will, their rates are not going to be impacted that we know of, but we are learning that as were going into the colder, darker winter months, in the interior, where costs are already high, this is impacting the rate payer and its something that i think often times we forget that you dont have to be in the range of the fire to have your rates impacted by what were seeing with these significant events. When we talk about hardening the grid, we all know that undergrounding would certainly eliminate some of the some of the risk that you see. Youre not going to have downed lines because of fire, but the cost is considerable. Youre in california, which is a seismically prone area. You did though mention that undergrounding was one of the things that pg e was looking at. Can you speak a little more to that and whether thats really even viable . Certainly. You know, historically ungrounding was for aesthetic purposes, you had a downtown and you wanted to beautify it and put the lines underground and recent years, we built subdivisions and more things underground and we do plan to underground more in california, distribution line. And you get to a certain voltage and size line, you cannot underground it. But its not a complete answer as you point out. And the state when the line is underground and you have a problem with it, its much harder to find the problem when its overhead so there will be more of this, but this will be much more targeted and it wont be a large percentage of the lines. Ive got additional questions, but well have everybody go around. Senator manchin. One second. I want to thank all of our presenters today. But mr. Johnson ill probably direct most of my questions to you because pg e is on the front burner. We had a great meeting yesterday and the responsibilities you took, youre in bankruptcy and coming into bankruptcy settling with the home owners and the different people that were concerned and basically affected by the fires. And nothing that we settle will bring back the lives of those who were lost. I know you share your grief in that. Where are you in the financial . Are you going to survive emake it for your customers . Where are you in basically upgrading the equipment and i think that dr. Russell has some grit, great comments and also some Great Technology that might be very helpful. If you can give us just a rundown financially where youre at, where the families are, selling within. Where the company is, are you stable enough . Are you going to survive . And next of all, where you are in your equipment upgrades and things that make sure you can prevent this as much as humanly possible from ever happening again. Thanks, senator for those questions. I came to pg e about seven, eight months ago and never been in a bankrupt organization before and didnt know much about it. Im now the wikipedia of bankruptcy so i can answer some these questions. Weve taken the most important step, which is to resolve to settle, to make amends, to particularically the fire victims, those who lost loved ones or lost their homes and make settlements and the bankruptcy courts have approved settlements with people we owe money to. Thats the key in the bankruptcy. A lot of other things have to happen in bankruptcy. Weve lined up financing to finance the new entity when it comes out, but theres still a lot of work and who the eventually owner is will be determined by the bankruptcy court, but at least in my mind the most important thing happened which is we have made amends to the people affected by the fires. And in terms of by the way in the California Law we have to be out by the end of june next year, so well know the answer pretty quick about what its going to look like. Weve done a tremendous amount of work in upgrading the system and this year alone, we inspected every asset in the high Fire District and repaired what needed repaired on a priority basis. Looked at every substation and were installing hardened wire and historically the Vegetation Management rules in california were pretty restrictive. They have been loosened, so were clearing a lot more so were doing about everything we can. Were adopting some of the technology from the national lab and from texas a m and from australia so we are sort of operating on all fronts to make this system safer and more resilient. Dr. Russell, do you have anything to add to that as far as what youre seeing in evaluating that . Does anybody in the panel want anything other comment because its the most devastating things weve seen and our hearts go out to every Family Member who lost a loved one and loss of their worldly goods. Were hoping that that i was very impressed with mr. Johnson basically saying that the fault that they were at fault and the company was at all the and even though hes new to this theyre trying to make those amends and make this correct. Is there more that can be done, any other actions taken . There is more that can be done. Not because the utilities have not been using state of the art equipment available to them. Thats an extremely regular point. You hear in the newspapers unfortunately that weve heard some of the lines and some of the polls were back from world war ii in place. We built rigorous Power Systems in the United States, theyre meant to last for decades and decades. There are lines outside of our house that have been there since the 1940s that are still delivering power and frankly, theres not really much wrong with them because the copper in those lines is probably better than what wed put up today. You have to be careful about talking about age in a power system because they are meant to last a very long time. You can have a power system with new wire that will come down the same way in a vegetation related incident that be if theyre 20, 30, 40 years old. What can we do . We need to do more to use advanced diagnostics. Everything people say they want to do is good, clear the trees, stronger, bigger poles, concrete, x, y, z. All good things. And ive looked at all the fires in california that are significant as well as in texas and oklahoma and other places, many things were doing is not addressing those causing the fire. Were spending an awful lot of money and we should, dont take me to say you shouldnt. One thing you do may prevent the biggest fire youre about to have. You should do everything. But a lot of fires that none of the hardening is going to fix. We need more diagnostic, way form analytics is able to diagnose your car, your condition and health of your body, and we can most certainly diagnose in realtime a lot of things failing in Power Systems. Thank you very much. Senator, chair murkowski and Ranking Member manchin. Dead and dying trees can increase the severity of wildfires and put the safety of our firefighters at risk. Last years unspeakable tragedy in paradise, california where 85 lives were lost, and taking place between hazardous force conditions and our infrastructure. In fact, going back to montanas terrible fire season, 2017, i remember reaching out to one of our county commissioners in the midst of one of the bad fires. He shared a startling story with me about firefighters and the risk that was that they could not take of putting firefighters near high voltage transmission lines when the fire was brewing because of the carbon emitted by the fire, the smoke and gases and the arcing that come from the high voltage transmission line in the ground. At that point that battle is almost lost. We have a chance to be proactive in managing the vegetation along high voltage transmission lines, but when the fire starts, he said, he said, steve, we cant move our firefighters near that high voltage line because we put them at risk. Their lives are at risk because of arcing from the high voltage lines. And these stories and these catastrophic wildfires are not an anomaly. Unless we do something about it, we will see more catastrophic wildfires. We must increase active Forest Management. Especially near our power lines and electric infrastructure that run across tens of thousands of miles of our federal lands. Doing so is critical to preventing wildfires and as the count commissioner shared to putting them out as well. Thats why ive been developing Bipartisan Legislation with senator feinstein. Think about this, a republican from montana, a democrat from california working together on active Forest Management. It could expedite vegetative management along infrastructure along other reforms and i look forward to bringing this Bipartisan Legislation before this committee in the near future. You mentioned the forest expediting vegetative review. Im glad were making progress forward. But i believe a statutory category cal solution could be useful. If you first discuss the challenges in engaging with federal agencies for permits to remove hazardous vegetation . Thank you, senator. Yes, there are several challenges and thats, i do believe the law is really helping to move along and move this into a better plane. So thank you again to the committee and congress for passing that, but you still have you have a large workload at the agencies that can create time delays as youre going through the process, and its also for small utilities, especially, very expensive. It can take a couple of it can take anywhere from two to three years for smaller projects. Three to four years for larger projects once youre into the process and even if you pay for your own Third Party Analysis on it. So, thats in a utility, that may only have several million in revenue a year to start with, adding that cost is a big load. Can you discuss then the benefits as well on kind of the better news side of this of establishing a new statutory cog, removal of hazardous structures on federal lands . Yeah, i think, like i said before, senator, we have a lot of these utilities have very good working relationships with the local offices of the Land Management agencies and i think clarifying to the extent where it should and could be clear in law, would free up both sides to do what they know needs to be done on a more timely basis, so that would be a large benefit right there. Thank you. Dr. Russell, my remaining time. You speak in your testimony about the dangers of arcing in terms of causing wildfires. Could you also address the risk to firefighters and the scenario that was described to me by my montana county commissioner . Yes. I can. The plasma thats created in the heat and the smoke products of a fire thats burning at several thousands of degrees at the flame tips up around a transmission line creates a conductive path that will allow arcing to occur. Often it occurs between two wires up at the top which creates another fault condition, but it can occur to ground. Its a dangerous condition for anyone to be in. Although it is a difficult set of circumstances to create and often the fire has to be very aggressive at that spot. So, having a firefighter standing at the spot of the most aggressive fire is a little dicey, but of course, theyre there to put it out so it could be very dangerous for them. All right, thank you. Thank you, senator dayne. Senator king. Thank you all, very informative. Dr. Russell, im trying to figure out exactly how this happens. In my bathroom ive got a gfci switch, something happens theres a fault and it instantly goes off. Doesnt that happen in this case . You talk about a fire up at the top of the tower. Arent those arent there devices that would automatically trip that line so that it doesnt continue to feed the fire . Or couldnt you have a device if a wire falls toward the ground, that it would be deactivated before it hits the ground in a matter of milliseconds . Theres about three levels of questions. Let me take you in the order. The device you have in your bathroom needs 7 milliamps of current from you to earth or the bathroom sink or water to trip. When you have an arcing clamp like this on the circuit, its a low initial current and its not detected by any device utilities currently have and in concept it would be stay operating at five milliamps and it wouldnt detect it. Thats our problem is the things that we use today are looking for higher currents. Theyre looking for the higher currents that occur in many, many faults. Cant this be engineered . It seems youve engineered it. Youve engineered a device that informs us, but how about engineering a device that trips the circuit . Tripping the circuit would be the direct consequence of first being able to detect it. We have the technology to detect it and we already know how to trip the circuits off so integrating this into the utility system is of course a plan that has to be done. The utilities are using extremely good equipment to detect the fault once it becomes a higher currently fault. Pg es equipment today which im very familiar with would probably detect a fault and trip it in a few hundred milliseconds. I mean, thats exceptional, right . The problem is, that fire can start in about 16 milliseconds. Grasses in an arc condition based on Research Done in australia show that ignition occurs in 10 to 20 milliseconds. So, we dont have equipment today that could remotely do that. Now the last part of your question was, the lines that are dropped, can we defect them before they hit the ground . Theres work thats been done and experimented with at san diego fast electric, a good friend of mine ran that project. Its a wonderful thing to do, but the problem is this, theres nothing wrong with that if we can do that. The line drops, cut it off before it hits the ground. Great thing to do, but what caused the line to fall in the first place . It hmay have been this arcing clamp detectible 21 days before. And certainly the technology that you have online is very dramatic and important testimony. Let me ask another question. Is the this is sort of a chicken and egg. Are are these problems in california caused by failures in the routine i know its not routine, but call it routine failure in the presence of a lot of fuel or are the failures caused by the weather event which also incidentally created the fuel . In other words, is it wind . Is it something that causes it or are they kind of could the kind of technology that were talking about here obviate this problem . You can have a system with everything working well in a Current Situation and have the branch blow into the line 100 miles away and 100 mile per hour wind and you have a fire. It is weather related and these arent routine failures, these are routine. These are weather events, as we said, 100 Miles Per Hour winds in sonoma and napa, thats a weather event. But this technology would help because say theres a branch that blew into the line, it would shut the line off. And the other thing is here, it is so dry, i moved to california late april and eight months with no rain and one spark, i mean, just a spark and you know you have conflagration. So anything that would stop the current immediately would be a tremendously helpful technology. Well, theres an undertone to this whole discussion and thats Climate Change. We talk about it a lot around here in sort of ab tract terms. Im going to a meeting on it in a half hour, but here is a real direct dollars and sense impact that is affecting consumers, individuals, families, lives, all over the country. And addressing that underlying problem and its a part of the solution, granted more longterm. Absolutely, this is a climatedriven event and shows up in 147 million dead trees because of drought. Warmer temperatures, so the beatles dont die. Increasing wind speed and change in wind direction. This is a climatedriven experience. Thank you. Very important testimony. Thank you madam chair. Thank you, senator king. Senator gardner. Thank you, madam chair and thanks for the witnesses being here today. And i kind of continue on the conversation that weve had with various witnesses this morning. Mr. Johnson talking about the impact that youve seen in california, we have municipal owned cooperatives and investors owned, in colorado that face the same questions, obviously. In your testimony, you mentioned 50 of your service area was a high buyer threat area. Could you remind me again, the federal footprint in that part of your service area . Yeah, so we cover about 70,000 square miles in Northern California. Half of that is in higher fire threat districts, so 30,000 square miles and 30,000 linear miles of line and about a third of our lines in that designation are in federal lands. And so, that gets into this issue of Climate Change as well and land Management Practices because land Management Practices have a very Significant Impact on that threat that you face that could come from drier fuel, more fuel, and Management Practices matter or the lack of Management Practices matter to your companys transmission infrastructure. Youd agree with that . Absolutely, makes a big difference. As you talk and listen to some of the testimony this morning, youve spent 3. 8 billion youve said since when . In the last decade. 3. 8 billion and thats on Forest Management in your own right of way . Correct. During the farm bill negotiations last year we talked about this, too, we had some success across the aisle on Vegetation Management Pilot Program that allowed for wildfire mitigation to work adjacent of transmission rights and ways of federal lands. As good as of a job you do within your own right of way, if the massive fire burns 50 yards in the forest lines, that on your infrastructure as well. Beatle kill and the actualities to be able to deal with outside of that right of way, could give themselves a buffer . That would be as well. And were working with the Forest Service to utilize the authority that weve given. How would you describe the opportunities publicprivate partnerships to protect against the threat, in line with something weve talked about . So the bill that was passed last year or the year before you just mentioned was helpful. Access to federal lands and a couple of things going along with that, making sure the rules that come out are good rules, continued funding of those things and the opportunity for publicprivate partnerships, i think the agencies have shown a lot more interest in working with us on those things since that bill was passed and so we have agreements now with interior. I think were working on a master agreement with the Forest Service that we dont have to come in every year and redo things so i think that all of that is moving in the right direction. Dr. Russell was talking about some of the technology you could have. Could you talk about the practicality cost impact, what that means to have technology on a clamp that would trip the kind of technology to shut off the threat . So, one of the things that we always worry about is Public Utilities is affordability and how do you balance safety costs and all of these things. And so we are doing small pilots with these technologies. I think on dr. Russells, we have six circuits and come from australia and what were going to have to figure out is how well they work. Do they work in our conditions. If they do work . We could deploy those and maybe reduce some other things were doing like cutting down fewer trees, but its too early for us to know exactly how that technology will displace more manual activities. Thank you. Thank you, madam chair. Senator cortez masto. Thank you, thank you. And to put things in perspective, nevada is one of the driest in the country. 9. 45 inches our rainfall. We no longer have wildfire season, we have wildfires all year long. The chamg challenge we have and thats why i appreciate this, with dr. Inhofe and mr. Russell and following up. This new technology is a gamechannigame gamechanning game gamechanger. Are we in the testing of it . Weve been testing to are several years. We started at the state legislature of texas after the 2011 wildfires, a project that i headed, 2012 to2016 we ran a project with several utilities placing this there to determine how effective to be. Its extraordinarily effective and several are rolling this out right now. The largest coop in the United States in Central Texas is rolling this out on their system and they already have quite a number of these units installed. It works, its available, this is no longer something thats in a laboratory. This has been available now for several years, but was rolled out softly so that we could determine how to best integrate it into the utility industry. For 5 to 10 a customer for the typical circuit for about threeyear payout. You can install one box thats not much bigger than this on one circuit and it takes care of if you have 2,000 customers, its monitoring 2000 customers. I would add to that, that in san diego, the instance fall power lines, they need to deenergize them within 3. 1 seconds typically. And theyre working with whites engineering, i believe, out of pullman, washington, to test that and its had early success. Theyve begun installing on a small fraction of circuits that are some of the highest risk circuits and i know that i went to the eei wildfire conference in san diego in october and all of the utilities in washington, and california are working together on mapping risk and identifying High Priorities for some of the new concepts. You project wouldnt roll it out on all the systems, the higher and coming out of the laboratory, the vendors are involved. That shows a reasonably short pathway. Is there more we should be doing at a federal level to advance this technology . The reason i say this, im also interested and we talk about this technology being one tool that we should be looking at to address these fires. And i know that there is talk among some of the states about how we how we adopt incentives for communitywide space programs. And let me give you a perfect example. Because were one of the states of wider use. Conservation is important for us. Late 1990s and 2000. Southern nevada particularly started incentivizing people rolling up their grass, using their oscape landscaping and we did it through incentives. And should we be looking at a federal level to help innoce incentivize programs like that or other things best practices we should be aware of . Two things come to my mind. One is that the publicprivate partnerships that this committee and others have been very supportive of in terms of helping move technology out and put into practice have been very effective and i think the key there is having industry involved in the research and the panels and other things so that they can identify them and volunteer partners to demonstrate and get them engaged quickly. Those proven to be very effective and the other thing weve seen, part of the challenge for regulators and consumer owners figuring out how much is worth spending in terms of resilience and we have very Good National data in terms of outage costs to consumers for up to 24 hours, as you go into longer duration outage costs, the Information Base is thinner, and one thing that i think this thing could examine, are there opportunities to better articulate the long the consumer cost for Long Duration outages regardless of the source, whether its wildfire or other outages and i think that would give regulators and owners and utilities and others, better information to help identify how much resilience is worthy of investment and what would it cost, the tradeoff in terms of costs to consumers. That seems to be a student for some federal attention and how do we strengthen that knowledge. Thank you. Thank you. Senator risch. Thank you, madam chairman, i come at this from a couple of different perspectives. As you know, my undergraduate degree was in forestry, particularly Forest Management and after i got out of school, after i went to law school. That was at university of maine, wasnt it . Not exactly. [laughter] after i got out of law school, i actually defended a utility in a lot of Different Cases and actually defended fire cases. And a couple of observations i would make from an overall standpoint and that is, number one, the utilities do everything they can to try to stop this. Transmitting electricity is dangerous and as a result of that, the courts around the country have said that utilities will be held to the highest standard of care there is as far as handling electricity. So the utilities take that obviously to heart. And, but when you have wires out there, theres going to be faults from things that you cant possibly imagine. One of the very earliest cases that we had in idaho was the utility was held liable, a reach, but they were held liable when two hawks got to fighting and got tangled up and fell between two lines and actually arced between the two lines and started a fire and burned up a crop, and of course, took the side of the farmer. But its hard to say that that was reasonably forseeable, but thats what happened. But the number of i handled a case one time where a young child got into a substation and wound up touching two hot points and you just theres so many different drunks hit poles all the time and wind goes through here. Theyre going to have these kinds of things, so they do everything they can to stop it. I appreciate the work being done by dr. Russell and others, but now is such the fault can be detected almost instantly and shut everything down, but almost isnt quite good enough. What you need is something that can forsee a fault, which dr. Russell, help me out. I think thats impossible to forsee a fault. Actually, in the very earliest stages, this is not a fire mechanism when it starts to arc and we can detect it. It will continue to get better, im sure. , but the point is, theres going to be times when youre going to get arcing and a fire started. So then you go to the next point and once you have that happen, what do you do about that . And that is, you need forest maintenance and you need to be have the right of way cleared out. Im going to ask that it be introduced into the record. This is a routine operation to maintenance to reduce fire risk on utility rights of way dated december 12th, 2019 and it was signed by the state director for the blm in idaho. It only three pages long and if i can paraphrase it, hey, guys, the fire started in these right of ways and give the utilities all the help they can get to get these utilities to get these utilities some help as theyre clearing out their right of way. One sentence says it all. The right of way determines that its necessary to prevent wildfires, then the field office shouldnt require any additional notice to proceed or form of prior approval prior to conducting the o and m work. And i think that that is you dont see this from bureaucrats very often that they can say its quickly and clearly as they can, telling everybody that, look, let them get in there and do this and dont be having them fill out the paper work. These are the things that need to be done because when you have electricity being transmitted through an urban area, its actually easy for the Fire Department to get there and put out a fire. As weve seen in california, if its started in the middle of nowhere and once it gets going its katie bar the door, and so, its important that these right of ways be cleaned up constantly so id like to introduce this into the record. That will be included as part of the record. It really underscores the two sides of this, number one, trying to do everything it that possibly can be done by the utility to stop the fire and then secondly, to get the rye of way cleared up so if a fire does start, its minimal. The universities, of course, are intersent advised and that this incentive question was raised. Theyre incentivized by the fact they do business on a cost plus basis virtually everywhere and theyre regulated by the Public Utilities commission whatever you call it in the various states and so they are incentivized to go out and do it. And the Power Company in my state has contracts with people to go out and trim the trees on the right of ways. And theyre at it every single day. It is a constant program. Im amazed here at washington d. C. When i see the the kind of outages that our outag our Power Outages that you get here and its primarily because they dont 0 do the work on the right ofway. Its important to get out there, because when trees grow, the branches get blown into the line and when you get a fault, you get a fire and its that simple. You need to be out there clearing those lines. Thank you for holding this hearing and i think its important for everybody to recognize the two parts to this, thank you. Thank you, senator risch. Senator cantwell. Well, following up on my colleague from idahos point. In the 2018 legislation, there was a cantwellmurkowski provision and to make it easier, i think some of you mentioned the blm, ability to management on forest land and blm to give them quicker access to federal land to remove trees and and when you review the blm on the new laws, im interested to hear what we can do to speed this up so that the treming protocols are in place and were moving forward, and mr. I am who have, if i could hear from you. Also in the gardner cantwell legislation we gave more tools, digital mapping and at one of the agencies using these, what can we be successfully doing if we were and the obvious issue of our National Labs trying to develop this prediction model, which im all for, because i feel like a lot of this is a changing climate and drier conditions, which also just ignites a higher propensity for these events to happen. And im interested in what you think i think when it comes to water and fire, neither one of them recognize National Boundaries and my colleague and i are having a meeting later today on the Columbia River treaty issues and pushing ahead. On the fire side, its also just as important, were seeing in the Pacific Northwest so much impact from canada. So how can we manage this if were not in partnership with canada and what theyre doing to help us manage it . Because its so, i dont know what we can do to get cooperation, p and l on on a mapping system. If you can comment on those mr. Corwin. And the last point, canada has fires as well. Coordination nationally and internationally makes a lot of sense. On implementing the regulations, its helpful for that legislation go through. Now we really want to make sure that implementation is coordinated between those two agencies and that its quick. The regulations that are proposed are very different between the two right now. Weve commented on the Forest Service, with some suggestions and as of others on how we can make sure were clear on what is routine maintenance and what is a hazard tree. Are we really going to hit the time lines and implement this efficiently across their offices and to the west. With blm, as the senator noted, good guidance. Its a brief guidance, its not an actual regulation, its a memo to the state offices, but its a good start and well want to follow up with them and make sure that its happening. But in both distances very helpful in congresss role in overseeing this is very helpful so i appreciate the hearing today. Ill talk a little about it bio mass and the importance of international cooperation. In 2018, Washington State had the phenomenal air shed problems with smoke. One day they said we have 300 fires burning in oregon, and Washington State and british columbia. And you will that air shed came down and filled my columbian basin so i have a 95 mask in my vehicle. So clearly it expands National Boundaries. The work going on now preliminarily and thats at levinworth, central watershed, so the cascades. And using that to identify fuel buildup. Health. Biomass and moisture content and et cetera. That began was maps and is update j updated on a day ahead, week ahead, and where do we have in the biomass combined with high fuel buildup that might inform the owners of infrastructure to process those, puget sound energy, and other power comes across the watershed. This is sort of an early activity and the issue would be how much of that might be extended down into 0er critical areas, either forest and range areas for the upcoming fire season. And you know, they cant do the whole west, obviously, in six months, but perhaps pick one or two additional areas and that could be extended across the canadian boundary as well. Clearly through the negotiation of the Columbia River treaty, that water is a central part of that negotiation. The interesting thing from a Grid Resilience standpoint. Most of the energys storage in from grand cooley north. And if youre looking for resilience, the Storage Capacity in the river, how do we assure flexibility, expanding that border for the overall columbian river basin. Thank you. And thank you for mentioning that, but i really want us to get that satellite time and information because i think it will be helpful for us. So, new. Thank you, senator cantwell. Senator hirono. Thank you, madam chair. A question for mr. Johnson. And people in the rest of the country dont know that wildfire is a real problem in hawaii, but it is and last year hawaii had 627 fires that burned over 32,000 acres with the biggest fires resulting from hurricanes approaching the islands and just this summer wildfires burned over 14,000 acres on maui island alone with conditions that firefighters said they had never seen before. The temperatures in maui were hot maximum records were tied or broken 84 times april through october. The fires moved quickly across what used to be managed sugar cane farmland, but has now gone fallow and invaded by highly flammable grass. Its increasingly similar to circumstances in california and its important that we learn from those experience toss best plan for our future. And also like hawaii is like california with row newable leading resources. How do you think that california moved to zero pollution carbon sources with the need for fire risk. Can universities utilities build grids and powered by mostly renewable sources . Great question. I dont think theres any contradiction between fire safe and carbonfree. I think you can do both. I think we need to do both. I think the climate problems that we suffer are causing a lot of these fires, it sounds like thats the cause in hawaii. Hurricanes. Invasive species. The size and strength of events is increasing and so i dont think theyre mutually exclusive. I think in the shortterm, particularly in california, as we prioritize what were doing. We may have to prioritize system hardening and Fire Prevention at the expense of a little bit of other things, but this will not get in the way of meeting californias energy goals or renewable goals or anything, well do these together. I hope that we can learn from your experiences and perhaps my office can follow up with what you folks are doing to meet both of these needs. For mr. Inhofe. The key support to hawaiis Renewable Power. 2025. As your additional testimony notes. The labs have been working with Hawaiian Electric to determine how to use advanced controls for our contributed Energy Sources like rooftop solar to improve the overall power grid. So we have heard a lot about hardening the grid. What role can Community Scale microgrids, using local Power Sources and Energy Source play in assuring that communities can maintain power or recover quickly from fires, hurricanes, and other hazards . Thank you for the question, senator. So local distributed Power Supplies can help a Community Ride through an outage such as a Public Safety power shutdown, to provide Critical Services and health care, fuel pumping other things. While the power system is out and being recovered. And that that would work for wildfires or work for hurricanes and other things. Part of the research and doe is focused more on how you network multiple microgrids. In hawaii i know thats the case with your large number of milt facilities and all there. Grids on the blue sky day versus a dark sky when you could route the power. It helps to prioritize Public Safety during times of outage. So with this networking of micro grids going on do you play a role in that quick. It is going on in hawaii and a number of other places in alaska they have a number examples of that as well. A number of commercial vendors are working with and his dimmest thing those. Those are very active in the demonstration phase. Its connected to the National Security agenda in terms of supporting the military bases around the country and using some of their resources as well. I i know we have a hard stopo i will just submit the of the questions for the record. Thank you very much. Just one very quick question focused on what the senator had raised with regard to the cost in my Opening Statement california has some of the highest electric grid prices in the country so as you look to the expanses that are necessarily involved if you harden the infrastructure and work to mitigate the risk incorporate technologies obviously there is a cost. Is there a tradeoff that has to go on that in order to provide for the greater resilience you have to pull back on another initiatives of the agenda cracks you have that incorporating renewable opportunities what does that look like with your portfolio Going Forward to balance that cost cracks im assuming some of this has to be shifted spirit this is a great question and one we wrestle with the prioritization whats most important in the short term and i will tell you the administration in california and the Public Utility Commission have recognized this that we need to prioritize safety first so at the start of a proceeding before the California Commission what are the priorities going to be managing safety California Energy goals and affordability cracks so we will know how this ends up we work with safety first we may have to prior tour on dash prioritize a little. Just real quick do you think coming out of bankruptcy and reorganizing and the commitment you have to make will that be passed on will you see increases to your consumers quick. Nothing in the bankruptcy is put to the consumer that will be paid by shareholders there is some Cost Increases coming to the consumers that were planned before the bankruptcy was declared and actually the consumer will see fewer increases after the bankruptcy they had before. It will be better for consumers with the upgrades of the system to the benefit of the customers and they will help contribute to that. This has been a very interesting conversation and i am glad we were able to not only hear about the very specific situation the tragedy we have seen in california over the past years, but the thinking forward what we can do on a proactive basis and we see some of that innovation through labs and universities. I thank you for that. We do recognize as a committee we have always had a problem with fire. Thats nature but what we have seen with the ever increasing threat and the intensity is the fact you have an interface unlike anything we have seen before where folks are out in parts of the country where they just were not living before and we see threats to property and life and how we accomplish what it is that the consumer expects which is to have power when they want it on their terms but do it for the safety of all and respects the issues regarding the resilience we are dealing with these are serious challenges that you have helped put a little note of optimism with the technologies we have available to us and be moving forward. With that votes have been called we will conclude but thank you for being here and traveling to make this [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] in dubai you compare it to being on the jetsons. Its not there yet but thats the vision. The vision is to have flying airships early in this coming decade, and not just a few of them carrying around rich people to golf courses and luxury hotels. They want to have these flying airships carrying all kinds of people and they want to have a flying network, like a metro system with little stops all over dubai, with flying machines carrying people back and forth. Stephen baker whose latest book hop, skip, go looks at how technology is changing technology. Watch the communicators tonight at 8 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. Tonight we take a look at books on business. Next on cspan2, a state Department Discussion on human rights and iran with Department Officials and human rights activists. Thats followed by house hearing on possibly implementing National Paid family and medical leave. A look at the government use of facial Recognition Technology and whether its an intrusion into personal rights. We now turn to the state Department Discussion. [inaudible conversations]