San Francisco ag-tech entrepreneur’s death tied to rusting wire that had supported PG&E power line – NBC Bay Area

State regulators have told PG&E to account for the risk of wires used to hold up its power lines after failures sparked both wildfires and the sudden electrocution of an ag-tech entrepreneur on a Monterey County farm.

State energy infrastructure safety officials – in charge of overseeing utilities compliance with Wildfire Safety Plans – recently told PG&E and other utilities to assess the fire risk associated with so-called tie wires.

Tie wires are aluminum coated strands that have long been used to bind high-power lines to ceramic insulators on power poles.

Back in January 2022, a rusted tie wire on a 12,000- volt line to a PG&E pole broke and caused the line to fall, striking Steven Dodge, 34, killing him instantly. Dodge was standing on an irrigation platform as he tested remote equipment to monitor water flow.

According to the lawsuit filed by his widow, Dodge was co-founder of Acuity Agriculture, an agricultural technology startup that developed remote-monitoring tools for farmers. In a 2021 podcast, Dodge described the difficulty of earning growers’ trust and building relationships in an industry where personal connections are essential.

“As my mom always kind of taught me growing up, it’s all about the relationships,” Dodge said. Investigators with the state Public Utilities Commission ultimately found PG&E responsible in Dodge’s death, for “failing to properly replace or reinforce the tie wire.”

The failed wire after its protective aluminum coating had worn down, exposing the steel underneath that rusted to the point of failure, regulators found.

Photos reviewed by state investigators show electrical burn marks on the cap Dodge wore at the time he was hit by the slumping line as he worked on the raised irrigation platform.

Records from the state investigation show that PG&E inspectors had identified similarly rusting and broken wires on two nearby poles at the same King City-area farm several years before Dodge was killed.

For Dan Mulkey, a former PG&E electrical engineer who spent four decades with the utility, those earlier findings should have prompted a closer examination of the surrounding equipment.

“That was just a huge red flag,” Mulkey said. “That says everything else that was built at that same time and that same location is highly, highly suspect.”

Despite the citation in Dodge’s death, regulators did not seek fines. Earlier this year, PG&E recently settled the wrongful-death case for an undisclosed sum. The utility declined to discuss the litigation, citing a confidentiality clause in the settlement agreement.

Documents from that wrongful-death litigation — as well as a recent CPUC regulatory investigation – indicate broken or loose tie wires pose an ongoing wildfire hazard.

The wrongful-death suit revealed that tie wire failures sparked at least two wildfires — one near King City and one in Kern County – in the years leading up to Dodge’s death.More recently, the CPUC cited PG&E for several loose tie wires in its system.

Regulators cited a PG&E notice indicating that such loose wires had sparked at least one pole fire.While the utility disputed the findings related to the loose fires identified by regulators, the utility recently agreed to a broader $22 million regulatory settlement with the CPUC.In a statement, PG&E said it understood regulators’ concerns about tie wires and had enhanced its maintenance efforts.

The company said it was using drone inspections and newly installed real-time grid-monitoring devices to help identify and repair problems that could lead to wire failures.

“Tie wires play an important role in securing conductors to insulators on our electric system,” the company said. “PG&E inspects our electric infrastructure including tie wires in alignment with our compliance requirements.”

The utility outline the efforts it says show its commitment to improving fire safety, but critics remain skeptical.

Former California Public Utilities Commission President Loretta Lynch found the utility lapses were bad enough, but also faulted the agency’s handling of tie-wire failures, including earlier incidents involving wildfires.

Lynch said regulators failed to penalize the utility for previous failures and questioned why the commission had not demanded more immediate corrective action.

“They seem to be asleep at the switch,” Lynch said. “It’s a clear dereliction of duty for the Public Utilities Commission to fail to tell PG&E to ‘fix the problem now.”