Utahns seeing more power outages from fire sensors this summer

SALT LAKE CITY — Across Utah, thousands of people have found themselves without power in recent days, when they need it most to stay cool.

Rocky Mountain Power said many of the outages are triggered by fire sensors and meant to prevent a bigger disaster. We’re also seeing more of those outages this summer so far compared to 2023.

On Wednesday, a crews replaced a power pole in Pleasant Grove, shutting off electricity to homes in the area to do so.

Spokesperson Jona Whitesides said RMP notified customers of a planned outage from 9 am to 2 pm for the project. However recently, many other customers have been experiencing outages that were not planned, and not part of the company’s regular maintenance schedule.

“A lot of those have been what we call ‘enhanced safety settings,'” Whitesides explained. “So when we go into fire season, we’re able to change the sensitivity on those settings.”

He said when fire settings are turned on, sensors will automatically cut off power if they detect certain winds in dry conditions. The lines with those settings, he said, are mostly in areas with a lot of grass fuels, along a wildland urban interface or up in the benches, and in canyons.

“They’re going to de-energize within a tenth of a second, and the whole point of that is for us to not create a spark,” Whitesides said. “If we have a spark that falls down to the ground to those grasses … you’re off to a wildfire.”

The sensors kicked in about a half dozen times across the state last weekend, he explained. Fire sensor-related outages, Whitsides said, accounted for roughly half of RMP outages between last Friday to Sunday.

During that time, he said about 10,000 to 12,000 customers lost power for anywhere from 30 minutes to 10 hours, although he said most outages averaged a few hours.

How long it takes to restore power, Whitesides indicated, depends on the location of the outage, the terrain the lines are in, and the distance from the nearest crew.

“They have to actually physically walk the lines and check and make sure there’s no debris, and then we can turn on the power,” Whitesides said.

Tooele suffered a 10-hour outage in July, he said, which ended up being so long because the lines were up in the canyon.

If customers are noticing more outages this summer caused by fire sensors, they aren’t wrong.

Data provided by Whitesides shows that while RMP has seen fewer outages overall in 2024 compared to the year prior, it has experienced 34 more outages due to enhanced safety settings so far in June and July 2024, compared to June and July 2023.

There have also been 44 emergency deenergization for wildfire outages in 2024, and there were none in 2023, according to the numbers given by Whitesides.

“I think that’s a lot of where we see kind of the — maybe the frustration with the customers and wondering, you know, ‘Is this really helpful?'” Whitesides said, of what customers may be feeling from the sudden loss of electricity during the dangerously high temperatures.

But, he said each fire sensor-triggered outage potentially prevents a wildfire.

“We essentially don’t want to be … what happened in Maui, what happened in California, and a couple of those fires,” Whitesides said.

He referenced the devastating wildfire that tore through Maui, decimated the town of Lahaina, and killed dozens of people nearly a year ago, which was initially ignited by downed power lines. Similarly, the Camp Fire in Paradise, California in 2018 — the state’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire in its history — started because of power equipment.

“I think that the prevalence of what we’ve seen in the last few years with wildfires that have been caused by utilities, you’ve seen a bigger push here for us to be a little bit more proactive,” Whitesides explained.

Rocky Mountain Power has a team of in-house meteorologists, Whitesides said, plus a couple hundred weather stations dotted around Utah and a control center in Salt Lake City that allows them to monitor conditions and prepare for potential fire sensor-related outages.

“We can kind of stage the crews. Once power does go out, then we dispatch our crews,” he said.

That way, he said, they can respond when the next fire sensor outage hits.

“Our goal is to balance the safety, but then also get the power back on as quickly as possible,” Whitesides said.

Before a potential outage, Whitsides urged customers to have emergency supplies on hand and create a backup plan. He recommended a disaster supply or outage kit, extra battery packs to charge electronics, and when experiencing an outage, cover south and west-facing windows and seal doors to keep the home as cool as possible. RMP has additional ways to prepare for power outages on their website.