As wildfires grow in intensity and destroy communities across the West, electric utilities have come under more intense scrutiny.
During windy, dry weather, electric infrastructure can spark wildfires. This was seen in 2022 when a tree fell on power lines near Ruidoso, leading to the fatal McBride Fire.
Now utilities across New Mexico are implementing procedures such as public safety power outages to reduce the likelihood that infrastructure leads to devastating wildfires.
Farmington Electric Utility Service has some advantages in that area, Director Hank Adair told the Tri-City Record.
“We're a little more unique than other utilities based on our vegetation structure,” he said.
The FEUS system is primarily in piñon-juniper ecosystems, while other utilities in the state might face fires fueled by ponderosa pine, fir and spruce.
However, Adair said FEUS does have dense vegetation in the riparian areas along the San Juan and Animas rivers.
While Adair does not anticipate FEUS will need to implement public safety power outages, he said that he cannot rule out the possibility. If that were to occur, Adair said the public would be notified before the utility shut off a section of its grid.
He said it would have to be an “extreme event” for FEUS to turn off power to customers to reduce the chance of a fire.
Adair said FEUS has three main things it does to reduce the risk that its equipment could start a fire. Those include preventive and predictive maintenance and engineering controls.
“One of the biggest things we do is tree trimming,” he said.
Adair said FEUS has a contractor that helps with the tree trimming efforts.
“We invest a lot in vegetation management of our total budget. We invest about $2 million on per year,” he said.
Adair said on the day he spoke with Tri-City Record the utility had seven contractor crews trimming trees. Three of the crews were responding to customers’ reports of tree branches in utility lines, and the other four were conducting what Adair referred to as “systemic tree trimming.” Those crews were going down a circuit, pole by pole and line by line, methodically trimming the trees.
“Our goal is to have a five-year rotation on tree trimming per circuit. So we invest a lot and spend a lot of time on trimming trees,” he said.
In terms of predictive maintenance, Adair said FEUS has invested in redundant transmission. That allows the utility to take a transmission line down so linemen can inspect the infrastructure. Adair said during the inspections, crews will replace damaged equipment and tighten all the hardware.
From an engineering standpoint, Adair said FEUS has equipment that detects faults and reduces the likelihood of sparking.
