By Tim McLaughlin

Feb 13 - Southern California Edison’s equipment ignited nearly 60% more fires in 2024 than in the previous year, mainly tiny ones that were quickly extinguished, as the utility battled to prevent catastrophe in the months leading up to the Los Angeles wildfires.

The escalation of fire ignitions in SCE’s territory, disclosed this month by the utility in a quarterly filing for regulators, preceded multiple wildfires that devastated metropolitan Los Angeles at the start of this year.

SCE, a unit of Edison International EIX.N, faces multiple lawsuits blaming its equipment for starting the Eaton Canyon blaze, one of the major wildfires. No official cause has been determined. SCE has said it does not know what caused the fire.

SCE’s ignition reports reveal an escalating number of incidents throughout 2024, especially in districts where the fire threat is high.

SCE reported 135 fire ignition events in its territory during 2024, up from 86 in 2023, according to the SCE data released this month. Of those totals, there were 35 events in high-fire threat districts in 2024, up from 19 in the previous year.

SCE said low humidity, dry vegetation and high winds were among the factors that boosted fire ignition events in 2024.

“We are concerned when we have all three,” SCE spokesperson David Eisenhauer said. “Weather was definitely one of those factors outside the utility’s control.”

Fire ignition events typically include equipment failures, wire-to-wire contact, lightning strikes in high-fire threat zones and wire contact with dried out vegetation and balloons, according to SCE’s reports.

Over the past decade, fire ignitions from SCE equipment in its territory have averaged about 120 a year, SCE data showed.

Utilities must report ignitions to the California Public Utility Commission when their equipment is involved and the resulting fire spreads more than one meter. The fires are usually small and extinguished with no serious damage.

The Eaton Canyon fire scorched about 14,000 acres, and Jefferies analyst Paul Zimbardo estimates the damage it caused will cost about $22 billion before any settlement discounts.

Reducing fire ignition events is part of the calculation for determining annual performance incentives for senior executives at Edison International, according to proxy statements filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Fewer fire ignitions in 2023, for example, helped EIX Chief Executive Pedro Pizarro achieve a $1.85 million cash bonus that year.

As power demand escalates and wild weather events grow more frequent in California, SCE is racing to replace and upgrade transmission lines, towers and other equipment that could spark a fire in a territory parched by severe drought. It must play catch-up because of rising infrastructure failure rates as equipment becomes obsolete, according to SCE executive testimony before California’s Public Utility Commission.

“The combination of age, obsolescence, and limiting designs that do not meet current standards leads to a higher probability of safety incidents and outages, as well as longer outages when they do occur,” SCE said in CPUC filings.

For example, SCE cited more than 1,000 downed-wire incidents in 2022, and 43 explosions associated with underground equipment.

In a letter to the CPUC earlier this month, SCE acknowledged the Los Angeles Fire Department suspects the utility’s equipment caused the Hurst Fire, which burned about 800 acres in January.

Fire officials said that fire appeared to have started near an SCE tower holding high-voltage transmission lines that fell to the ground.

(Editing by David Gregorio)

((Tim.Mclaughlin@thomsonReuters.com))