Pacific Power explains longer Bend-area outages

Published 1:26 pm Friday, July 25, 2025

New wildfire safety settings mean longer outages as crews inspect power lines manually

Pacific Power experienced 14 outages between May and mid-July tied to expanded wildfire mitigation efforts, affecting approximately 42% of customers in the Bend area.

According to Senior Communications Specialist Simon Gutierrez, the prolonged nature of the outages were due to “enhanced safety settings” that automatically shut off power when a fault is detected, disabling automatic restoration during wildfire season and requiring the lines to be manually inspected before restoration to reduce the risk of sparking fires.

“The misnomer is that these outages are being caused by these settings. What’s happening is that the outages will typically be longer in duration because it takes a little while to get a crew out there. And when there’s higher fire risk, they need to inspect the entirety of the line to make sure that it’s safe to turn on the electricity,” Gutierrez said.

Of the 14 outages between May and mid-July, Gutierrez said one was caused by a squirrel, one a problem with an underground power line, one by an excavator hitting a tree that feel into a line and one by a breaker tripped while crews were working to restore electricity; four of the outages were “equipment related” and six are still under investigation.

Frustration over the power outages prompted the company to send out an email to customers on July 14 that explained how the safety settings worked. The email also says that customers in the Bend area have been placed on these settings “for the last several years,” with additional customers placed on the settings in 2025. Gutierrez clarified that these settings have been in use since 2023. In 2024, around 30% of Pacific Power customers were subject to the enhanced settings and that number increased to 42% in 2025. Last year between May and mid-July there were 11 outages, Gutierrez said.

When asked why additional areas around Bend were added to the enhanced safety program, Gutierrez cited updated data modeling and real-time meteorological analysis conducted by Pacific Power’s five in-house meteorologists.

“They have advanced machine learning and AI modeling that crunches weather and fire data from the last 30 years, and they draw on that to inform some of their decisions. At the same time, they’re also monitoring real time conditions and weather forecasts and basically all the data they get their hands on,” Gutierrez said.

In situations where hazardous weather can be predicted, Gutierrez said Pacific Power tries to reach out to customers to let them know that there could be an emergency shut off. Unfortunately, he said, for shutoffs that are a result of unforeseen factors such as wildlife, there is no opportunity to notify customers in advance.

“Since the end of the 2024 wildfire season, Pacific Power has been identifying, assessing and strengthening (where needed) circuits that experienced enhanced safety settings related outages last year, with the goal of reducing the frequency and duration of outages during wildfire season, and reducing impacts to customers,” Gutierrez said.

To find more information about the enhanced safety settings, customers can visit Pacific Power’s website.