How electric companies leverage the grid to be firefighters, not fire starters

America’s power companies are utilizing emerging technologies and improved strategies to help reduce the risk of wildfires, 52 of which are currently being managed nationwide, having burned almost 2.12 million acres across the country, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

“I like to think of the grid as ubiquitous, it’s everywhere, and it can be the fire tower of the future,” said Scott Aaronson, senior vice president of security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), the industry trade group representing all U.S. investor-owned electric companies.

“We want to be part of the solution,” Aaronson added. “We want to be firefighters, not fire hazards.”

Doug Dorr, a technical executive of distribution assets at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), an independent, non-profit energy R&D institute, explained that increased wildfires threaten electric companies’ ability to provide reliable and affordable electricity to the customers and communities they serve due to two key challenges: more extreme weather/climate and vegetation management.

“With climate change and increased extreme weather events, the power delivery systems of the future must be more prepared for wildfire threats and other weather-related dangers,” Dorr said. “Utilities are working to harden the grid for all hazards — and not just to mitigate wildfires.”

At the same time, while the utility industry has an obligation to make the grid safe, there are also a lot of ways to leverage the infrastructure in constructive ways to use it for good, said Aaronson, such as by being fire towers or fire breaks, and as a way to identify incidents when they happen and to communicate with first responders.

“Wildfire is a relatively new risk. We’ve always had wildfires, but really it was a western issue. The western states are further along in their journey, both the electric companies in the West, as well as the regulators in the West, in understanding cost-effective ways to mitigate wildfire risks,” said Aaronson.

“As we see that risk moving into all parts of the country, such as in the Carolinas, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey,” he added, “it really has become a much more widespread issue, and the electric companies and the regulators from Eastern states are learning and benefitting from the experience of the companies and policymakers in the West.”

Currently, the industry is in a constant education mode, said Aaronson, so that all stakeholders — including the regulators, the electric companies, the general public, building code enforcement, insurance companies, and others — are having to figure out how best to address wildfires in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

“New technologies and strategies have been developing over the last few years and the innovation continues,” said Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (WUTC) Commissioner Ann Rendahl.

The utilities have adopted several new technologies, such as 360-degree cameras for early smoke detection, drones equipped with lidar technology to inspect equipment, and use of AI to review and interpret the data collected from cameras, Rendahl told Daily Energy Insider, as well as drones and weather data to help with prediction and response to wildfires and other extreme weather events.

The WUTC recently heard presentations from the state’s three regulated investor-owned utilities at a July 22 recessed open meeting on their wildfire mitigation and communication plans.

“The utilities’ plans all demonstrated adoption of consensus industry approaches for wildfire preparation, mitigation, and community communication,” said Rendahl.

Washington’s IOUs will file their plans in October with the State Department of Natural Resources under a new law passed in 2023 that requires mitigating the risk of wildfires through electric utility planning and identification of best management practices appropriate to each electric utility’s circumstances, she said.

Puget Sound Energy’s (PSE’s) Wildfire Mitigation Plan (WMP), for instance, documents the Washington State company’s strategies, programs, procedures, and specific actions to respond to and mitigate the risk of wildfire in its service area.

“The ultimate priority is the safety of the communities and customers that PSE serves and of the personnel that serve them,” said Ryan Murphy, PSE’s director of electric operations.

The WMP incorporates best practice models from risk management, operations, emergency management, communications, training, and continuous improvement, and it complies with the requirements of the new law for IOUs. Murphy said it will be published and available on PSE’s website by Oct. 31.

Such collaboration is paramount, according to EEI’s Aaronson, because it does help mitigate wildfire risks.

“Policymakers, regulators and the industry that they oversee should work together in a more collaborative partnership,” he said. “We’re all on the same team and everybody wants to reduce wildfire risk and determine what is the most cost-effective way to do it.”

Education and understanding risk are also unique practices that can help, Aaronson said.

“You should invest in a way that addresses the risk in your service territory,” he said. “There is no place without risk, but there are some places with less risk.”

That means risk profiles are different for different areas, such as urban versus rural. Investments therefore must be prioritized based on the risk profile, though each utility in its area or service territory can utilize best practices used successfully by another company in another state, he said.

For PSE, Murphy cited several strategies being utilized to help mitigate the impact of natural disasters on the grid, such as grid hardening investments.

“PSE takes a holistic approach to updating and improving our infrastructure to create a grid that is reliable, resilient, and above all, safe,” said Murphy. “To reduce wildfire risk, PSE invests in projects and develops best practices that will reduce wildfire risk and improve the resilience of our grid to natural disasters.”

Examples include pre-season equipment inspections and replacements, enhanced vegetation management practices, upgrades to overhead infrastructure, such as replacing copper wire or installing covered conductor (“tree wire”), and in some instances, strategically undergrounding infrastructure.

PSE also has partnered with a third-party vendor to explore the installation of remote grid systems that combine solar, batteries, and generators to reduce wildfire risk by de-energizing overhead power lines, he said.

“Remote grid systems can be a potential non-wire alternative solution for wildfire mitigation and possibly more cost-effective than undergrounding when there are limited customers at the end of long line segments,” Murphy explained. “The vendor is currently performing a feasibility analysis for three sites in Kittitas County that could avoid around seven miles of undergrounding.”

Other utilities, such as Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), have had success using these systems, as well, he added.

Aaronson said that some of the existing policies are allowing for cost recovery for each investment, but in looking at the risk, which includes wildfires, he said it’s important to also consider what other types of risks can be brought down with these investments — “trying to be as effective and judicious with customers’ money as we can be,” he said.

A company’s wildfire toolbox, therefore, should include different tools electric companies can choose from based on the risks that they face.

Some are operational, like proactive power shutoffs, covered conductors so when there is tree contact it doesn’t spark, downfall interrupter so when a line does break it doesn’t spark; there are a number of technologies that reduce ignitions, said Aaronson.

“I’m a big proponent of better situational awareness,” said the EEI executive, such as weather sensor networks and understanding where wildfire risk may be the highest, for instance.

PSE’s Murphy said the company employs several types of situational awareness approaches, including meteorology, weather stations, and risk modeling.

For example, PSE’s meteorologist issues daily weather outlooks with one-day and six-day weather forecasts and identifies potential weather risks such as heat, thunderstorms, and wind gusts.

PSE also has installed 20 weather stations to date, prioritizing areas with higher wildfire risk.

“These stations provide more frequent and targeted weather data near PSE infrastructure,” Murphy told Daily Energy Insider. “PSE’s weather stations observe weather conditions in up to 30-second increments and evaluate important fire weather elements in real time. This includes measuring wind, temperature, and relative humidity.”

Likewise, PSE’s risk models consider dynamic factors in combination to identify areas of highest risk in its service territory, including climate conditions and geographic characteristics, areas with historically correlated weather patterns, wildfire probability, historical fire data, existing grid infrastructure and past grid performance. PSE hired Technosylva, a consulting company that specializes in wildfire risk science, to develop improved wildfire risk modeling and a real-time situational awareness dashboard, according to Murphy.

In addition to situational awareness, PSE also uses many types of advanced technology or equipment to help prepare for, respond to, and/or recover from wildfires in its state.

For example, PSE has partnered with PANO Cameras to install artificial intelligence (AI) cameras to monitor remote areas of its system and detect smoke much earlier than other methods.

“These alerts are shared with fire response agencies enabling faster response times which may greatly reduce a fire’s severity,” Murphy said.

PSE is also piloting Gridscope sensors on wildfire circuits. These are small, toaster-sized devices that mount directly to poles and capture tons of information about the surrounding environment like sound, vibration, electric field and weather conditions in order to alert PSE about the location and cause of disturbances on the grid, he said.

“The unique thing about this sensor is that it’s not electrically connected to the grid, which provides a lot of interesting advantages, including working when the power is off — meaning we will maintain situational awareness during major outages or even planned shutoffs,” said Murphy.

Additionally, PSE is using advanced power line settings on circuits in high-fire risk areas. These settings automatically turn off power when there is a hazard, such as a tree branch falling into a line.

“This helps minimize the potential sparks that could occur during high fire risk weather conditions,” Murphy added.

Likewise, PG&E currently leverages AI and machine learning across the company for applications in meteorology, planning, inspections, monitoring, and maintenance to help detect, prevent, and respond to the risk of wildfires and achieve greater electric system resiliency.

PG&E also said it has identified opportunities to further leverage AI for more automated data quality management, improved data collection and analysis, and other applications that can augment current processes and result in improved service for customers.

Alongside the electric companies, EPRI’s Dorr pointed out that technology developers and research organizations also continue to dedicate significant resources to exploring innovations aimed at reducing ignition incidents.

“There are many existing and emerging tools and technologies utilities across the globe use for wildfire awareness,” said Dorr.

EPRI maintains a public website with over 50 such technologies, he added, and while the organization doesn’t endorse or recommend any specific technologies, the catalog provides utilities with detailed information on the options they can consider, if their particular wildfire mitigation plan and their particular risk situation warrant installing any of the tech.

One of EPRI’s priorities is evaluating the effectiveness of new technologies and their ability to de-risk wildfire areas, including hardening the grid against wildfire threats and more aggressive vegetation management to increase system resiliency.

“Overall, new equipment and technologies are evaluated in advanced laboratories, such as EPRI’s unique outdoor lab in Lenox, Mass., to expedite the adoption of wildfire mitigation technologies through rigorous testing and assessment, informing the energy sector and society at large,” said Dorr.

Operational practices are another proactive way to address wildfires, experts said.

For example, utilities are making sure they have clean rights-of-way.

“We want to go in and manage forests, trees, and grasslands so if a pole does come down during a storm, it doesn’t have a place to burn,” said Aaronson.

Dorr added that vegetation management is a much greater challenge than just inspecting and managing the utility right-of-ways.

“Managing vegetation needs to involve foresters, fire response organizations, communities, and other entities that together can evaluate the risks and develop appropriate response plans together,” he said.

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