On May 6, 2024, Oncor filed its first System Resiliency Plan (SRP) with the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT). If approved, Oncor will invest approximately $3 billion over a three-year period in order to enhance the resiliency of its transmission and distribution system. While the three-year period will commence upon PUCT approval of the plan, it is anticipated to cover 2025 through 2027.

“This plan outlines strategic investments to enhance system hardening and modernization, vegetation management, wildfire mitigation, operational capability and other resiliency measures – all of which will serve to deliver a safer, smarter and more resilient electric grid for the benefit of Oncor customers,” said Ellen Buck, vice president, business and operations services. “As we continue to experience incredible growth across our vibrant and diverse area, prioritizing proactive resiliency work will be crucial for withstanding and recovering from various threats while improving service for our customers today and far into the future.”

As the largest transmission and distribution utility in Texas, Oncor works each day to deliver safe, reliable and affordable power to more than 13 million Texans across 400 communities. In fact, Oncor’s 143,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines cover about a third of the state, crossing the plains of West Texas to the piney woods of East Texas, and the Red River down to the rolling hills of Central Texas, including the sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

Serving such a dynamic range of geographic, climatic, and vegetative regions also means preparing and responding to a possibility of diverse extreme weather conditions, including extreme heat and extreme cold, thunderstorms, tornadoes, ice storms, wildfires, floods, and hail events.

While Oncor’s seasonal and weather mitigation and preparations occur year-round, recently passed legislation allows electric utilities to expand and accelerate resiliency efforts through the implementation of PUC-approved SRPs. To ensure a data-driven and strategic investment focus, Oncor analyzed more than two decades of past weather, damage and location data and its impact to customers across our service area.

Based on this analysis, Oncor identified key resiliency measures and the investments needed in these areas to help proactively address potential outage causes, substantially reduce outage minutes and better serve new and existing customers, including wildfire risk mitigation, the security of the grid, vegetation management and the expanded deployment of smart grid technologies. These investments, if approved, are expected to enable Oncor’s system to better withstand and more quickly recover from the wide range of extreme weather and other risk impacts, including helping to decrease the amount of infrastructure damage that can lead to customer outages; decrease equipment failure and storm-recovery costs; improve customer restoration times and reduce the length of outages when they do occur; and decrease long-term costs for customers by avoiding expensive emergency repairs.  

Oncor’s SRP includes $2.9 billion in investments and $500 million in related costs, with the following key resiliency measures:

Overhead and Underground Resiliency and Modernization – Approximately $1.83 billion to modernize and harden overhead systems (poles, crossarms, lightning protection and capacity) and underground systems (cable injection/replacement and switchgear automation).

Continued Optimization of Distribution Automation – Approximately $510 million to enable, expand and optimize distribution automation through new ties, capacity and intelligent switches. Distribution automation includes the use of various smart equipment that sense power flow, redistribute load, identify faults and in some cases, restore power automatically.

Expanded Vegetation Management (“VM+”) – Approximately $285 million to expand the existing Vegetation Management program, and leverage remote-sensing capabilities such as satellite and laser imaging, detection and ranging. Even one tree can affect power for an entire neighborhood or more, and our well experienced VM team, including certified arborists, follow industry and scientific best practices to balance safety and reliability needs with tree health and aesthetics.

Enhanced Cybersecurity Risk Mitigation – Approximately $525 million to enhance cybersecurity risk mitigation, enhance and secure Oncor’s digital backbone infrastructure and other measures.

Improved Physical Security – Approximately $80 million to improve physical security, including remote asset monitoring and other protection.

Enhanced Wildfire Mitigation – Approximately $900 million to enhance wildfire mitigation efforts, including $182 million in specific wildfire mitigation measures. The overall investment includes the implementation of overheard resiliency and modernization, enhanced vegetation management and expanded distribution automation measures in areas at the highest risk for wildfires. The SRP offers Oncor an opportunity to advance wildfire mitigation strategies through additional investments in fire safe device deployment, advanced wildfire risk modeling, and strengthening, modernization and protection of assets in wildfire mitigation zones. 

For more information and updates on SRP, please visit Oncor.com/Resiliency.