California's publicly owned utilities met on November 17, 2025, for CMUA's annual Wildfire Forum. Utility leaders shared hard-won lessons from this year's devastating Palisades Fire and explored new technologies that could help detect and prevent future disasters.

The forum brought together regulators, utility executives, technology vendors, and policy experts to tackle questions about how to protect communities while keeping electric service affordable and reliable. Discussions ranged from AI-powered grid monitoring to home hardening programs, federal forest management reform to state liability law, and the experiences of utilities large and small working to get ahead of wildfire risks.

Here's a closer look at some of the key topics discussed during the session, which included participants who attended in person at SMUD in Sacramento and online:

Learning from Los Angeles: The Palisades Fire Response
Jade Thiemsuwan, executive director of enterprise risk for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, walked attendees through LADWP's response to the Palisades Fire. The fire burned more than 23,000 acres, destroyed nearly 7,000 structures, and killed 12 people in January 2025.

LADWP's recovery has been fast. By July, crews had put up nearly 2,000 poles and re-strung 63 miles of wire. Thiemsuwan said the permanent rebuild "will be the fastest disaster recovery in modern California history."

"The effect of uncertainty on objectives is the definition of risk," Thiemsuwan told the group. "And there's no bigger uncertainty than what Mother Earth is cooking up right now."

LADWP is working on a 10-point plan that includes burying power lines underground in high-risk areas, installing covered conductors, expanding its control systems, setting up wildfire detection cameras, and upgrading vegetation management. The utility is also creating its first enterprise risk division and looking at whether to start implementing Public Safety Power Shutoffs during dangerous conditions.

Regulatory Evolution: SB 254 Creates Space for Collaboration
Mark Wenzel from the state Wildfire Safety Advisory Board explained how Senate Bill 254 (Becker), signed into law this year, is changing how the Board works with publicly-owned utilities. The law replaces the requirement that publicly owned utilities submit annual wildfire mitigation plans with new requirements for comprehensive updates every three to four years on a staggered schedule.

"Having all 51 wildfire mitigation plans come in all at the same time was candidly a little bit challenging," Wenzel said. The new setup lets the Board spend more time with utilities that face higher wildfire risks and focuses less on paperwork and more on actual risk reduction.

Technology as a Game-Changer: Grid Sensing and Real-Time Detection
Scott Lindsay from Gridware presented technology that could help utilities spot problems before they become disasters. The company's solar-powered devices sit on utility poles and check conditions 6,000 times per second using artificial intelligence. More than 26,000 devices are now installed across the country, and they all share what they learn with one another.

Michael Champ from Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) shared results from SMUD's five-month test of 500 devices. The utility caught 14 events, getting alerts an average of 45 minutes after something happened. In one case, a device noticed when a car hit a pole and tilted it just 0.4 degrees—nobody called 911, but crews could check that everything was safe.

Steven Poncelet from Truckee Donner PUD talked about his utility's work on wildfire prevention, which meant boosting the vegetation management budget from $350,000 to over $2 million—10% of what the utility spends to operate. Truckee Donner also bought CloudFire risk modeling software that gives a much more detailed picture of fire risk than the state's fire threat maps.

But Poncelet also pointed out the hard reality facing smaller utilities. Even with all this work, Standard & Poor's downgraded Truckee Donner's credit rating because 85% of customers still live in high fire threat areas with overhead power lines. He noted that 80% of the questions in the rating review were about wildfire.

The Holistic Approach: Beyond Utility Infrastructure
Dr. Michael Wara from Stanford University pushed attendees to think bigger than just utility equipment. California faces a problem that affects everyone, he said, and needs work on both preventing fires from starting and reducing what happens when they do start.

"Too often we focus solely on ignition prevention rather than thinking about cost-effective ways to modify consequences," Wara said. He pointed to a 2024 fire in Wrightwood, a town in the San Gabriel Mountains, where good community preparation meant only 12 homes were lost out of 1,000 that the fire hit directly.

Wara noted that homeowner insurance costs in high-risk areas have jumped much more than utility bills—from $2,500 to $5,500 per year on average in just a few years. "If you're a homeowner, your electricity bill and your insurance bill, they're just bills you have to pay," he said. He thinks California needs solutions that help both utilities and the insurance market.

Wara also said Stanford will survey municipal utilities across the western U.S. to understand what they're doing about wildfire, similar to a study they already do with investor-owned utilities.

Legislative and Policy Landscape
Kurt Miller, CEO and Executive Director of the Northwest Public Power Association (NWPPA), gave an update on the Fix Our Forests Act. The federal bill would let utilities cut down dangerous trees within 150 feet of their power lines on federal land without waiting for Forest Service approval. The Senate Agriculture Committee passed the legislation on an 18 to 5 vote, but Miller said it faces an uncertain future because of partisan fighting in Congress.

Miller had better news from some western states. Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana all passed laws this year that protect utilities from lawsuits if they have approved wildfire plans, follow those plans, and act carefully. Utah already had a similar law.

AI and Emerging Technologies: Trinity PUD Case Study
Dave Delange from Trinity Public Utilities District in Weaverville, Calif., showed how AI is helping small utilities work on wildfire prevention. Trinity serves only 7,500 customers across 2,200 square miles—about the size of Delaware—and 78% of that area is federal land. The utility has dealt with 13 major wildfires since 2005.

Trinity uses AIDash software that analyzes satellite images of the entire system with AI. The system gives each section a risk score based on multiple factors, which helps the utility figure out where to work first. Trinity also has most of its field staff trained as drone pilots. They fly the same routes repeatedly to spot changes over time.

"I've been there 23 years. I know how bad certain spots are," Delange said. "But in order to pass this knowledge on to the next person, this is a great way to do that."

Looking Ahead
A consistent theme throughout the day was the need for utilities to collaborate with fire services, local governments, and their communities on wildfire preparedness. Speakers emphasized that technology alone won't solve the problem—utilities also need better ways to work across boundaries, smarter approaches to liability and insurance, and strategies for targeting investments where they'll do the most good.

-- EGRS contributed to this report.