NV Energy has filed its plan for dealing with natural disasters with the Public Utilities Commission.
Unlike some other utilities in the west, the natural Disaster Protection Plan lists planned outages, partial shutdowns of the grid, as a last resort to be used only in extreme situations.
NV Energy officials say they have already done significant work to make the electric grid more resilient, including inspecting nearly 20,000 wooden poles in high fire risk areas and making critical repairs and removing vegetation.
The utility has also hired a fire mitigation specialist to help implement the plan and is working with UNR to install a network of wildfire alert cameras to reduce fire response times.
The utility plan targets vegetation management, removing combustible plants and other things from around utility poles and removal of hazardous trees to minimize chances of them hitting power lines.
A spokesman said they are also hardening equipment, using covered conductors instead of bare wires and metal poles instead of wood.
The plan covers not only wild and grassland fires but flooding, high wind events, winter blizzards, earthquakes, landslides and avalanches.
It calls for increased inspections and repairs, equipment replacement and infrastructure improvements.
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