Utilities adopt investments in wildfire mitigation and grid-enhancing technologies
As the country faces more than two dozen wildfires in eight states, electric power industry leaders say maintaining government partnerships at high levels and making investments in wildfire mitigation technologies are crucial for utilities.
While speaking on a panel during the Edison Electric Institute’s (EEI) annual meeting in Las Vegas this week, President and CEO of Portland, Ore.-based Portland General Electric Maria Pope, who was elected chair of the board of EEI on Wednesday, said wildfires are not just a utility company issue, but a society issue.
“Over the last five years, we’ve seen rapidly escalating impacts not only across the West, but really across the entire country, if not the globe. From a utility perspective, Pope noted the CEO-led Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council, which serves as the principal liaison between the federal government and the electric power industry on efforts to prepare for, and respond to disasters or threats to critical infrastructure, has worked closely with the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management on wildfire mitigation efforts.
“Just for perspective, 25 percent of the state of Oregon’s land mass is U.S. Forest Service property and that would be similar for the entire West, in terms of federal property. So we’re making sure that we’re all working together on this society-wide issue,” Pope said.
According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there were 28 large, uncontained fires across the country as of June 17. The country has seen more than 19,000 wildfires that have burned more than 2.1 million acres nationwide so far in 2024. More than 102,000 acres were on fire as of June 17 in California, Alaska, New Mexico, Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Utah.
Chris Rogers, partner at Guidehouse, said the statistics around wildfires are staggering.
“Four out of the last five years, the economic impact of wildfires has been $20 billion,” he said. “A decade ago, a big year was $1 billion. That’s a 20 fold increase in economic impacts. And the pace of those wildfires, major wildfire events, is growing at a similar rate as the economic impacts. So that’s very, very substantial.”
Wildfires were no longer just a threat to the western U.S., Rogers said, but for the entire country. Recent maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) show wildfire risks from California to Virginia and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast.
A new report from Guidehouse to be released in the coming weeks found that wildfire investment not only reduces initial wildfire risk, but can also make the electric grid more resilient and protect it from other hazards.
Utility companies should determine what mitigation strategies are best for their own jurisdictional requirements. No one solution fits everyone, Rogers said.
In another panel discussion at the conference, Steve Powell, president and CEO of Southern California Edison, joined Patti Poppe, CEO of PG&E Corporation, Bryan Spear, CEO of Technosylva, and Sonia Kastner, co-founder and CEO of Pano, to talk about how electric companies can partner with technology companies to implement wildfire mitigation and prevention technologies.
Poppe said working with government agencies and technology companies can help providers react to fires quicker.
“There’s no doubt that not one of us can do this by ourselves,” she said. “And it’s all aspects that we need the support from, whether it’s the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, or CalFire, or local officials, all of these partners are important to partner with. But I think the role that I feel most gratified about is leveraging smart cameras, early detection, automated delivery of ignition points to our first responders, (to improve) their ability to protect the community faster and not have to wait for the 911 call.”
Powell said communicating with the public during wildfire events also helps in managing wildfires.
“The communities and the customers, communicating with them on what’s actually happening during a weather event can be really challenging,” he said. “That’s been a significant investment on our side, to improve those communications and provide that situational awareness so that you’re telling the same thing to the customers and your residents, as you are to the fire agencies and to all the public safety partners is critical to be able to manage those events.”
Mitigating wildfire risk will help prevent the number of public safety power shutoffs, the panel said, a topic that will become more important as demand for electricity in an electrified economy increases.
In addition, instituting grid-enhancing technologies will be an important tool in the future as companies seek to meet an increased need for electricity, explained Alexina Jackson, vice president of Strategic Development at AES Corporation. In a conversation with Hudson Gilmer, co-founder and CEO of LineVision, Jackson said using grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) helps AES better understand what its lines are doing.
“We need a lot of additional transmission capacity in the system,” she said. “While we need new transmission lines, we also are looking for technologies that bring that capacity quickly to our customers. Because when we think about our customer experience, we recognize that for them time to power is essential. As we think about how we get time to power quickly, efficiency is a really key source of that solution.”
AES has spearheaded the adoption and advancement of GETs to shape the future of energy distribution and management. The company says there are several commercially available GETs that are noteworthy for their potential, including topology optimization, advanced power flow control, dynamic line rating, and storage as transmission.
Grid-enhancing technologies help electric utilities optimize grid performance, enhance operational efficiency and facilitate the seamless integration of renewable energy resources.
AES collaborated with LineVision on a demonstration project in what was the largest single deployment of dynamic line ratings in the United States. As part of the joint project, LineVision installed non-contact sensors on transmission structures owned by AES’ utilities in Indiana and Ohio. AES said the deployment of LineVision’s DLR technology on the grid provided valuable insights for planning and operations.
“By putting sensors on lines here, we know what our lines can handle and we know if we’re reading them correctly,” Jackson said. “What we also found as a bonus was to the situational awareness that we were talking about, we were actually able to say we don’t have to reconduct the entire line to meet future needs of our system, we can target a half-mile segment, to then unlock all of this headroom gain on this line.”
Jackson said the new load data centers will put on power lines across the country by 2028 will be the equivalent of eight New York cities. That additional energy will require companies to have more information about their grids.
“At AES Corporation, we are committed to a digital grid and to being more informed about our grid operations,” she said.
