California-based Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) and Pacific Union College will work together to build a "Resilience Zone" — part of PG&E’s Community Wildfire Safety Program — that involves infrastructure upgrades to enable the utility to continue providing electricity to local customers if grid-fed power lines need to be turned off due to high wildfire threats.

If a public safety power shutoff were needed in the area of Napa County included in the pilot project, the Resilience Zone would allow temporary mobile generation to connect to the grid. Those assets would energize facilities such as a fire station and a gas station, as well as portions of the town of Angwin not served by on-campus generation.

Facing possible liabilities that could top $30 billion for wildfires in 2017 and 2018, PG&E said in mid-January that it could file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization protection as early as January 29.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, the company said that it faces "extraordinary challenges" as a result of the wildfires that hit northern California over the past two years. It said that reorganizing under the protection of Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code was "the only viable option."

The utility serves 16 million customers across a 70,000-square-mile service area in northern and central California. Many of its assets, including electricity transmission towers and substations, are located in remote and hard-to-reach parts of the state.

The Angwin Resilience Zone project is designed to include infrastructure upgrades to enable temporary power generation, burying certain portions of power lines, and installing stronger, more resilient poles and covered power lines. Other components include a transformer and associated interconnection equipment as well as a ground grid, and grid isolation and protection devices. Installing this equipment now is expected to reduce the amount of time it takes to connect temporary generation to the grid.

(Read "Challenged by crisis, the electric grid decentralizes.")

Given the continued and growing threat of wildfire, PG&E said it is expanding its Community Wildfire Safety Program, which was launched in March 2018.

The Angwin Resilience Zone project is currently under construction and is expected to be completed in early 2019.