Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced on May 1 the launch of its new Continuous Monitoring Center, a centralized hub designed to detect risks early, prevent wildfires, and improve reliability for customers. The announcement comes during Wildfire Awareness Month.
The company said the Continuous Monitoring Center in San Ramon brings together people, data, and advanced machine learning from tens of thousands of sensors installed across PG&E’s electric grid. It also uses data from approximately 5.5 million smart meters scanning grid conditions. By analyzing this information continuously, trained experts can identify emerging issues—often before customers are impacted—and dispatch crews to address them before they escalate into wildfires or outages.
Mark Quinlan, PG&E’s Senior Vice President of Wildfire, Emergency and Operations, said: “The threat of wildfire requires more than incremental improvement, it demands a different kind of vigilance. With the Continuous Monitoring Center, we’re adding another layer of protection, using predictive intelligence from millions of data points across our system, to spot problems forming before they become emergencies. The results are clear: faster detection, quicker action, a safer grid and real cost savings for the customers we serve. We are also actively sharing what we’ve learned with utilities and industry peers around the world.”
The company provided an example where engineers identified a possible wiring issue on the Brunswick 1106 circuit in Nevada County through machine learning models. An electric troubleshooter found melted insulation at a transformer caused by degraded connections due to severe weather-related stress. Crews replaced equipment before an ignition could occur—a situation that could have led to a wildfire damaging structures and causing up to $1.4 million in losses.
According to PG&E’s statement, since 2025 there have been over 1,400 similar incidents detected early by their systems—referred to as “good catches.” The company says these efforts represent a shift from reactive response toward proactive detection as wildfire season begins.
PG&E describes the Continuous Monitoring Center as part of its broader approach that includes undergrounding power lines and deploying other technologies such as Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings (EPSS), Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS), AI-enabled wildfire cameras and more.
