BAKER CITY — Electric utilities have plenty of incentive to prevent their lines from sparking wildfires.

Such blazes can destroy homes as well as power lines themselves, resulting in long outages that can affect hundreds or thousands of customers.

Last year, the three investor-owned utilities that operate in Oregon — PacifiCorp, Portland General Electric and Idaho Power Company — were required for the first time to submit to the Oregon Public Utility Commission (PUC) a plan listing their fire prevention strategies.

This year other electric providers, including cooperatives such as Oregon Trail Electric (OTEC), also had to submit their wildfire mitigation plans to the state agency.

The mandate is part of Senate Bill 762, which the Oregon Legislature passed, and Gov. Kate Brown signed into law, in 2021.

The legislation deals with multiple issues related to wildfire risk and prevention in the state. OTEC, which is based in Baker City and has about 31,000 customers in Baker, Union, Grant and Harney counties, submitted its 17-page plan earlier this summer.

Eric Wirfs, director of operations for OTEC, said that for the cooperative the new requirement was largely an exercise in compiling existing policies into a single document.

“I would say 80% of what’s in there was already being done as prudent utility practices,” he said.

Reducing risk

A key part of that effort, he said, is trying to prevent a common cause for both power outages and for sparks that can ignite wildfires — a tree or tree limb falling onto a line.

To reduce that risk, OTEC maintains corridors along its transmission lines that are cleared of trees close enough to potentially fall into a line. These rights-of-way are generally 120 feet wide, Wirfs said.

Naturally, the transmission lines at highest risk are those that pass through densely forested areas. Local examples include the line that runs from Baker City through Sumpter Valley and on to Granite, and the line leading to Anthony Lakes.

Wirfs said those lines, which were previously inspected every other year, as the PUC requires, will now be patrolled annually.

OTEC’s plan also explains how the utility makes changes during the fire season — generally July 1 through Oct. 15, depending on conditions — that are designed to reduce the risk that a power line damaged by a tree or other cause will ignite a fire.

Transmission and distribution lines are equipped with “reclosers,” Wirfs said. Those are electronic devices that are designed to restore power to a line within a second or two if the “fault” — for instance, a tree limb that hits the line but then falls to the ground — is brief.

The purpose, Wirfs said, is to ensure that a small problem, such as a single limb that strikes a line but doesn’t damage it, doesn’t result in a long outage.

Outside the fire season, reclosers are set to operate up to four times in rapid succession, Wirfs said.

But on lines in higher risk areas, such as forests, reclosers are limited to operate just twice during the fire season.

The reason, Wirfs said, is that if a fault remains on the line, the more often a recloser operates and reenergizes the line, the greater chance it might spark.

Limiting the recloser to two operations reduces that risk, he said. That also increases the chances that a fault that doesn’t damage the line will result in an extended power outage, but Wirfs said that tradeoff is necessary to reduce the fire threat.

The fire-related settings for reclosers is not a new policy for OTEC, Wirfs said.

Intentional power shutoffs

The mitigation plan also addresses “public safety power shutoffs” — when a utility intentionally turns off power to a transmission line during periods when the fire risk is extreme.

Wirfs said OTEC has not had to do so. He called that a “last resort” situation.

OTEC’s plan lists the criteria the cooperative would use to determine whether to order a public safety shutoff, one of which is “immediately predicted winds of 50 mph or higher within the vicinity of OTEC facilities subject to shutoff.”

Fortunately, Wirfs said, winds of that strength are rare in OTEC’s territory.

Moreover, he said a survey of the cooperative’s tree-caused power outages showed that most — 10 of 13 — happened during the winter or otherwise outside fire season.

Both last year and again earlier this summer, OTEC sent letters to members who have service in areas at high risk for wildfire to alert them to the possibility, however remote, of intentional power shutoffs.

About 2,200 members — around 8.5% of OTEC’s total — have service in those areas, said Joe Hathaway, the cooperative’s communications manager.

OTEC’s wildfire mitigation plan states that the cooperative’s dispatch center monitors weather forecasts and each day assigns a risk level. When the National Weather Service issues a red flag warning — meaning that any fire that starts could spread quickly — OTEC delays routine work on transmission lines. The cooperative might delay such work on other days when thunderstorms or other severe weather is possible, but a red flag warning is not in effect.

OTEC has scheduled town halls for its members later this month, in each of the four counties it serves, to review the cooperative’s fire mitigation plan.

The town halls will last one hour. The Union County town hall will be Friday, Aug. 19, at 2 p.m. at the La Grande Fire Department, 1806 Cove Ave.

OTEC also urges its members to stay updated on wildfire-related information. To do that, call OTEC at 541-523-3616 or log in to your account on otec.coop and make sure all contact information is current. OTEC can send alerts and messages if a safety-related outage may occur. OTEC also highly recommends members sign up to “Opt In” to receive information via text messages. Members can do that by texting “START” to 352667.