Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) is expanding its contract with Planet Labs, a San Francisco-based provider of satellite-derived data, as part of the utility’s vegetation management program.
PG&E leverages Planet’s satellite-derived data on vegetation including canopy height, cover and proximity to electric-system infrastructure to prioritize the mitigation of vegetation associated risks. The companies have expanded their work together with a year-long contract that will give PG&E access to weekly “Basemaps” from Planet, to be used alongside the vegetation data already being leveraged.
Going forward, Abranches said, data showing which trees have the potential to strike powerlines is being added to the next version of PG&E’s own vegetation management risk-modeling.
“This data provides a more comprehensive layer of information, highlighting the relative vegetation situation and condition within designated areas. We’re currently proving the concept and assessing the potential benefits of machine-learning-based tree species identification and dead or dying trees detection models,” he said.
Since 2019, PG&E has used data from Salo Sciences, acquired by Planet in 2023, as a feeder data set into its wildfire risk models. And, since 2023, PG&E has incorporated two additional uses for Planet data: measurements of canopy density as the thickness of a tree’s canopy can forecast how much material might strike a powerline, and tree mortality which can identify areas of dead trees, which pose a risk to electric infrastructure and may indicate areas of high pest infestation and drought impacts.
Planet’s proprietary “Vegetation Encroachment Planetary Variable” combines multiple data sources together to deliver data on vegetation canopy height and cover, potential strike tree locations and dead tree cover. With that information, PG&Es says it can evaluate areas with high potential for vegetation-driven outages and ignitions.
“It’s a huge undertaking to manually observe and de-risk the over 70,000 square miles that PG&E has under management in California,” said Will Marshall, co-founder and CEO of Planet. “Planet’s satellite data and artificial intelligence supports broad area management to help reduce the risk of wildfires. We’re excited to be partners in this effort.”
