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CAISO

Statewide Fuel Mix

California's generation portfolio at the height of the 2021 fire season (Aug 16, 15:00 PDT). Solar is strong during the afternoon, but evening ramping to natural gas accelerates once PV output falls—a dynamic that worsens when smoke attenuates solar earlier in the day.

Generation by Source (MW)

Total system load: ~29,796 MW

Solar Generation
8,200 MW
27.5% of mix
Typically peaks ~13:00 PDT. Smoke derates reduce this by 40–60% during active fire days.
Natural Gas (Peaker)
9,600 MW
32.2% of mix
Fills the gap when solar falls off. During PSPS events, grid gas supply may be unavailable.
Renewable Share
48.5 %
Solar + Wind + Hydro + Geo
CAL FIRE

Active Wildfire Incidents

Major incidents burning simultaneously on August 16, 2021. Multi-fire seasons stress grid infrastructure across wide geographies—PSPS shutoffs may affect multiple utility territories concurrently, overwhelming regional mutual-aid capacity. Click a fire to view details.

Acres Burned by Incident

Click a bar to view incident details.

Incident Profile

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Select an incident from the chart to view its profile.

770,905
Total Acres Burning
5
Major Incidents
318
Peak AQI (Hazardous)
23%
Avg. Containment
EIA Form-861

Utility Reliability Index

SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index) measures average minutes of outage per customer per year, excluding major event days. Higher SAIDI signals structural grid unreliability—precisely the conditions that make the RaaS deployment model most cost-effective. PG&E's territory covers the most fire-vulnerable communities in the state.

SAIDI — Minutes of Outage / Customer / Year

California IOU and rural cooperative utilities, 2020–2021.

Lower is better
PG&E's SAIDI of 382 min/year is 4.4× that of SDG&E (87 min/year)—and SAIDI excludes PSPS events, which would push the total interruption time significantly higher in high-fire-risk territories.
CAISO OASIS

Transmission Zone Load

CAISO's three major transmission zones show actual vs. forecast load at 15:00 PDT on August 16, 2021. Load generally tracks forecast, but wildfire-driven PSPS events can create sudden, unplanned demand drops in NP15 (northern California)—masking the true distribution of stress on the remaining grid.

Actual vs. Forecast Load by CAISO Zone (MW)

Aug 16, 2021 · 15:00 PDT

NP15 — North
Bay Area, Sacramento, Sierra foothills
15,180 MW
+330 MW over forecast · PSPS pressure zone
SP15 — South
LA, Orange County, San Diego
12,340 MW
+360 MW over forecast · within normal variance
ZP26 — Central
Fresno, Bakersfield, Central Valley
2,276 MW
+86 MW over forecast · stable
Utility Data

PSPS Event History

Public Safety Power Shutoff events by utility, 2019–2023. PG&E has conducted significantly more PSPS events than other California utilities—reflecting both its larger high-fire-risk territory and its aging transmission infrastructure. As the frequency normalizes, the case for distributed islanding strengthens.

12
PG&E Total Events
2
SCE Total Events
2019
Peak PSPS Year
0
SDG&E PSPS Events

PSPS Events by Utility — 2019–2023

PG&E vs. SCE annual event counts. SDG&E: 0 events across all years.

Key insight: PSPS is becoming normalized as a substitute for grid hardening investment. Each event that affects thousands of customers without distributed backup power is a deployment opportunity for the RaaS model.