California Utility Exploring Innovative Microgrids, Seeking Collaboration on Wildfire Resilience Strategies

Wedoany.com Report-Mar 12, California utilities are under increasing pressure to make the state’s electric systems more resilient to climate threats, particularly wildfires.

Renata Bakousseva, principal project lead at major California utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company, chats with Factor This content director Paul Gerke about what PG&E is working on ahead of DTECH in Dallas, Texas.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), serving more than 5.5 million customers in Northern and Central California, is hardening the grid in myriad ways, including undergrounding power lines and tinkering with innovative ways of keeping communities connected during Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events.

Renata Bakousseva, a PG&E principal project lead on the microgrid strategy and implementation team, leads the utility’s PSPS office.

“I’ve interacted with customers impacted by outages,” she told Paul Gerke of Factor This. “I see firsthand just how critical it is for our grid to be resilient to the many different outages that we experience.”

Bakousseva will be speaking at North America’s largest utility conference, DTECH, March 24-27, 2025 in Dallas, Texas on a variety of topics including experimental microgrid use cases. Watch the video in this post to get a sneak preview of some of PG&E’s new projects and learn how the utility intends to collaborate with peers to devise the most effective wildfire mitigation strategies.

“It’s definitely not something we can do alone,” she said.

It’s not too late to register and secure your spot at DTECH to capitalize on access to the cutting-edge decision makers building the grid of tomorrow.