To make it acceptable to turn off whole sections of the electricity grid, the state will have to start a crash program to build a backup power supply for households and businesses in high-risk wildfire areas. The logical choices are individual solar and battery setups for households, and “microgrids” linking business districts. We need to make it OK for the utilities to take decisive action to avoid wildfire threats: When the main grid has to go down for safety, backup power must be available to keep medical devices, refrigerators and the internet up and running.

Source: Los Angeles Times December 10, 2018 11:03 UTC