2027 Event Agenda

Wildfire is no longer only a Western utility problem. As ignition risk expands into new geographies, utilities outside California are facing a question they weren't originally designed to answer: how do you build a wildfire risk program that is sufficiently grounded in operations to change decisions in real time, financially sustainable enough to maintain across a service territory where the risk profile and regulatory requirements look nothing like other parts of the country, and rigorous enough to address risk appropriately?

Entergy is building that program. And this session shows how.

Entergy operates across a large multi-state service territory where wildfire risk has increased over time. Historically, the organization has focused on reliability metrics, designing O&M and capital work to optimize those metrics. The rise of wildfire risk has further driven hardening programs and inspection practices, and the organization now faces a complex question: how do you evaluate projected risk and reliability outcomes for both near-term operational decisions and long-term capital planning in a data-driven way? The answer requires understanding ignition causes, wildfire spread potential, and consequences updated dynamically across an area that demands an approach that is tailored to the territory

This session covers how Entergy's Power Delivery and Crisis Readiness and Response teams are building a wildfire risk intelligence program calibrated to their service territory. An operational wildfire risk model provides understanding of wildfire risk across the system in real time, integrating vegetation health, fuel load, and asset condition data with weather inputs to surface where ignition risk is highest at any given time, giving teams the ability to access the information needed to make risk mitigation decisions quickly and in a data-driven way. A strategic wildfire risk model addresses the medium- and long-term horizon: understanding wildfire risk across the system to optimize investments in grid hardening and maintenance programs, asset inspections and vegetation management together, so capital deployment is grounded in risk data. Together, the two models establish metrics for monitoring situational awareness and enhancing our wildfire response across the organization.

Attendees will hear how Entergy is incorporating vegetation insights, including fuel load, tree health, and encroachment proximity to assets, into decisions as an integrated input. They will learn how the organization is building a common understanding of wildfire risk and mitigation efforts across internal and external stakeholders, including legislators, communities, customers, and field teams, to support preparedness and response during emergencies, and what a tailored implementation looks like for a utility whose wildfire exposure is significant but distinct from high-severity risk profiles.

Attendees will leave with a concrete framework for how a large IOU is building wildfire risk intelligence that produces actionable information as evidence, high-resolution data that serves as the basis for executing targeted operations, maintenance, and hardening mitigations at the asset and feeder segment level that balance risk, reliability, and affordability, and the integration decisions that affect the planning process