Wildfire Prevention Today and Tomorrow: PG&E Shares 2025 Wildfire Season Readiness Update, Showcases Local XPRIZE Wildfire Competitors
PG&E's Layers of Protection Are Working, Prevented a Major Wildfire in 2023 and 2024
SAN RAMON, Calif., June 6, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to monitor wildfire conditions and deploying proven layers of wildfire protection to prevent wildfires, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) shared its readiness ahead of peak wildfire season. These layers of protection helped prevent a major wildfire in 2023 and 2024.
Today, at PG&E's Applied Technology Services lab, the company's research and development facility, PG&E shared details about how the layers of protection are applied throughout PG&E's service area to prevent wildfires. PG&E was joined by representatives of XPRIZE Wildfire and two local teams – Ember Guard and Rain – who bring AI power and autonomous firefighting to the competition. PG&E is a proud sponsor of XPRIZE Wildfire and its work to build a pipeline of new technologies that support advanced wildfire mitigation, detection and response.
Today's Wildfire Resilience from Layers of Protection
- Undergrounding Powerlines in high fire-risk areas to permanently eliminate ignition risk. PG&E has undergrounded approximately 915 miles of powerlines since 2021 and plans to have nearly 1,600 total miles of powerlines underground by the end of 2026.
- Overhead System Upgrades include the installation of strengthened power poles and covered powerlines. This work reduces wildfire ignition risk by nearly 67% once completed. PG&E has completed more than 1,430 miles of overhead system upgrades since 2018 and plans to complete nearly 1,900 total miles of system upgrades by the end of 2026.
- Situational Awareness Improvements including the deployment of a state-wide network of nearly 1,600 weather stations, of which 1,400 are artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning enabled, and more than 650 high-definition wildfire cameras. The AI enabled cameras process data and provide automated wildfire notifications.
- Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings (EPSS) automatically turn off power within one-tenth of a second, or faster, if a wildfire hazard is detected. These settings protect 1.8 million PG&E customers in areas with elevated or extreme wildfire risk. In 2024, these settings contributed to more than a 65% reduction in reportable ignitions, compared to the 2018-2020 average. More than half of customers protected by EPSS did not experience a power outage while EPSS was enabled in 2024, and the average duration of outages on an EPSS-enabled circuit decreased 17% from the prior two-year average.
- Vegetation Management programs continue to evolve using a data-driven, risk-informed approach to help reduce both outages and potential ignitions caused by vegetation contacting PG&E's equipment. Over the past five years, PG&E has inspected, trimmed or removed over 960,000 trees and other types of vegetation in our service area.
- Drone inspections that more efficiently provide a bird's eye view of assets from the ground and air.
- Public Safety Power Shutoffs are a last resort during extreme weather conditions to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire. PG&E's experienced meteorologists use cutting-edge weather models to forecast wildfire risk at a granular level to determine the transmission and distribution circuits that will get de-energized.
"Rather than being reactive to conditions, our wildfire work proactively protects and prevents wildfire. We're keeping our system safe while we build resilience for the future. This work is essential in light of extreme weather and extended wildfire seasons," said PG&E Wildfire Mitigation Vice President Andy Abranches.
Tomorrow's XPRIZE Goal: Detect Earlier, Extinguish Faster
As wildfire conditions are dynamic from year to year, PG&E is committed to supporting a pipeline of new research, development and innovation to address climate-driven wildfire challenges. PG&E today joined XPRIZE Wildfire and two local teams participating in the four-year, $11 million competition to accelerate the speed of detection and suppression of destructive wildfires.
XPRIZE Wildfire encourages teams from around the world to innovate around a wide range of firefighting technologies across two complementary tracks designed to transform how potentially catastrophic fires are detected, managed and suppressed. PG&E is the co-title sponsor of XPRIZE Wildfire along with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
"For 30 years, XPRIZE has spurred innovation to address the world's most pressing challenges. In 2023, we launched XPRIZE Wildfire with a goal to end destructive wildfires," said XPRIZE Wildfire Program Director Andrea Santy. "Today, we have an incredible global cohort of dozens of teams making monumental strides towards developing solutions to reach this audacious goal."
One of the Bay Area teams showcased at the event was Palo Alto-based Ember Guard, a cross-disciplinary team led by Ahvish Roy, founder of ARX, and supported by Sangram Ganguly, Chief Technology Officer of Rhombus Power. It uses deep learning along with AI to produce a scalable cloud-based high-resolution wildfire model that forecasts the likely propagation and intensity of a wildfire so that firefighters can prioritize their limited resources
Also participating was Alameda-based Rain, which recently showcased autonomous wildfire suppression technology in California. A Black Hawk helicopter equipped with wildfire mission autonomy from Rain and MATRIX™ autonomy technology from Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, conducted a demonstration of a wide range of wildfire response missions and tasks, including finding and suppressing early-state wildfires, all commanded via tablet. Rain is a participant in the Electric Program Investment Charge program, a research and development project.
Learn more about PG&E's wildfire safety efforts at pge.com/wildfiresafety.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is a combined natural gas and electric utility serving more than 16 million people across 70,000 square miles in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit pge.com and pge.com/news.
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SOURCE Pacific Gas and Electric Company