PG&E Adds More Weather Stations and High-Definition Cameras to Monitor Wildfire Conditions
December 11 2019 - 06:43PM
Business Wire
More than 600 weather stations, 130 HD cameras
now installed across Northern and Central California
As part of its Community Wildfire Safety Program (CWSP), Pacific
Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has now installed more than 600
weather stations and 130 high-definition (HD) cameras across its
service area. PG&E will continue to expand these networks in
high fire-threat areas to enhance weather forecasting and modeling
and improve the company’s ability to predict and respond to extreme
wildfire danger.
“The station observations allow our meteorologists to analyze
critical fire weather elements like extreme wind, temperature and
low humidity,” said Ashley Helmetag, a PG&E senior
meteorologist. “The stations and cameras are a part of our
real-time situational awareness tools that assist us as we make
decisions on Public Safety Power Shutoffs to protect our
communities.”
This data is also critical information for PG&E’s analysts
in the Wildfire Safety Operations Center, the “hub” from where the
company monitors threats across its service territory and
coordinates with first responders and public safety officials to
respond to emerging threats.
Station observations are available to state and local agencies
as well as the public, through online sources such as PG&E’s
website, the National Weather Service and MesoWest.
The HD cameras are part of the ALERTWildfire Camera Network, a
situational awareness tool built by the University of California
San Diego, the University of Nevada, Reno and the University of
Oregon. The high-definition, pan-tilt-zoom cameras have
near-infrared capabilities that allow firefighters, first
responders and companies such as PG&E to confirm and monitor
wildfires.
More Planned
By 2022, PG&E plans to have installed 1,300 weather stations
and 600 HD cameras – a density of one weather station roughly every
20 circuit-miles and video coverage of roughly 90 percent within
the highest fire-risk areas.
Meteorology Information at your Fingertips
All of this information can be found at PG&E’s new weather
webpage at www.pge.com/weather. The weather webpage also
provides:
- Seven-day forecast updated daily by a PG&E meteorologist or
fire scientist
- Detailed, localized weather conditions
- Maps that show whether the National Weather Service has called
a Red Flag Warning and where
- Access to the thousands of weather stations and dozens of HD
cameras in use by PG&E
- Daily sunrise and sunset timetable
For information about fire conditions in California, go to CAL
FIRE’s website, www.fire.ca.gov.
For more information about the Community Wildfire Safety
Program, including links to update contact information, resources
for Public Safety Power Shutoffs and a schedule of upcoming
regional open houses and webinars, visit PG&E’s website at
www.pge.com/wildfiresafety.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E
Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas
and electric energy companies in the United States. Based in San
Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers
some of the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in
Northern and Central California. For more information, visit
www.pge.com and www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/index.page.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that are
not historical facts, including statements about the beliefs,
expectations, estimates, future plans and strategies of PG&E
Corporation and Pacific Gas and Electric Company. These statements
are based on current expectations and assumptions, which management
believes are reasonable, and on information currently available to
management, but are necessarily subject to various risks and
uncertainties. In addition to the risk that these assumptions prove
to be inaccurate, factors that could cause actual results to differ
materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking
statements include factors disclosed in PG&E Corporation and
Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for
the year ended December 31, 2018, their Quarterly Reports on Form
10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 2019 and June 30, 2019, and
their subsequent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. Additional factors include, but are not limited to,
those associated with the Chapter 11 cases of PG&E Corporation
and Pacific Gas and Electric Company that commenced on January 29,
2019. PG&E Corporation and Pacific Gas and Electric Company
undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any
forward-looking statements, whether due to new information, future
events or otherwise, except to the extent required by law.
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