Insights gained at the symposium Standing Up to Wildfire: Practical Tech and Tactics for Utilities
By Linda Barney, Barney and Associates
On June 4, 2025, Grid Forward hosted a Symposium ‘Standing up to Wildfire: Practical Tech and Tactics for Utilities’ in Portland, Oregon. Our writer Linda Barnery prepared a lengthy article about what she learned there, which we are republishing as a three-part series here. We published part one in July, covering the opening plenary with Dave Winnacker, retired Fire Chief and Policy Advisor for the Western Fire Chiefs Association. Part 1 also recapped learnings around “What utilities can do to reduce the risk of starting a wildfire.” Part 2 of the series discussed industry collaboration with first responders and communities.
Quantifying the Value of Resilience Investments
Analyzing risk and developing Wildfire Mitigation Plans are an important challenge for utilities and regulators. All speakers indicate that there is no way to lower wildfire risk to zero for utilities. Utilities and regulators are working on ways to mitigate the risk using the mitigation techniques described in the Symposium.
Wildfire Mitigation Planning and risk assessment
The Former Chair, Washington UTC, chaired a panel titled Utility Planning and Implementation of Wildfires Plans with panelists from West coast investor-owned utilities. Many PUCs are now requiring that their investor-owned utilities submit Wildfire Mitigation Plans for their review. His perspective is that the utilities are taking this work very seriously.
- Short and long-term mitigations: Various panelists indicate that their Wildfire Mitigation Plan has both short-term mitigations and long-term mitigations. Long-term investments might include underground conversions of overhead lines which are costly and take a long time. Short-term investments include situational awareness tools like weather stations, cameras, power shutoff, safety settings, and annual inspection of equipment in high-risk areas.
- Updating plans: Panelists will be reviewing their Wildfire Mitigation Plans at least annually and will update plans to address changes in new technology, evolving risks, and to add suggestions from regulators who reviewed the plan.
Utility risk analysis tools
Forward and backward-looking analyses (Berkeley Lab): Ex ante (based on forecasts rather than actual results): Free calculator tools to forecasts for costs and valuation before an event occurs. Analysis is often used to identify a proposed investment. Ex post (based on actual results rather than forecasts): A calculator tool to use after an event has occurred. Based on actual results rather than forecasts. Analysis often used to measure progress or performance of an investment that has already been made.
Interruption Cost Estimate (ICE) Calculator tool (Berkeley Lab): A tool designed for electric reliability planners at utilities, government organizations or other entities that are interested in estimating interruption costs and/or the benefits associated with reliability improvements.
NREL Customer Damage Function Calculator (CDF): The CDF Calculator is a resource for facility owners and resilience planners to understand the costs of an electric grid outage at their site. The calculator provides a process to elicit facility outage vulnerabilities and estimates how costs vary with outage duration.
More Wildfire Mitigation Tech Solutions at the Symposium
The Wildfire Symposium was host to many companies offering technology solutions, and only a few were in the sessions reviewed in this article. Here are many of the others with brief descriptions— they’re worth checking out.
BoxPower: BoxPower provides a turnkey solar microgrid that includes a modular hardware platform, integrated software, and services to operate power systems. The microgrid solution uses solar panels and battery storage to generate and store energy to maintain power supply during outages caused by natural disasters such as wildfires. Using a microgrid allows a utility to maintain power while removing damaged power lines.
CTC Global: CTC Global makes carbon fiber conductors that carry approximately twice the amount of electricity as traditional ones with steel cores. The CTC GlobalACCC® Conductor reduces line losses and improves grid resilience.
Delphire: The DELPHIRE SENTINEL FD3™ solution is an all-In-One Wildfire Detection And Visual Confirmation system that supplies utility customers with an early detection and warning system that can report fires in their earliest stages. Delphire uses a real-time, AI-based detection system that detects and reports fires and stores images and sensor data for root cause verification.
Exodigo: Exodigo scanning technology and AI software creates complete, accurate underground maps that enable decisionmaking for customers. It is used by utilities to identify underground structures such as electric, sewer and gas structures without digging underground and can be used for maintenance and other projects.
GridWrap: GridWrap composite power pole wrap solutions extend the lifespan and resiliency of utility power poles made from wood, concrete, steel, or composite materials. Their pole wrap solutions provide additional protection against wildfires serving as a cost-effective alternative to full power pole replacement.
OroraTech: OroraTech’s wildfire management platform delivers near real-time, wildfire insights. The solution uses data from 25+ satellites and AI-driven analytics to help utilities proactively manage wildfire threats, simulate wildfire scenarios, and protect critical infrastructure.
Prisma Photonics: Prisma Photonics Hyper-Scan Fiber-Sensing™ is designed for monitoring long-range infrastructure. PrismaPower enables transmission operators to accurately monitor overhead and underground power lines in realtime using an existing optical fiber network on top of the transmission grid to monitor for electrical issues, partial discharges, hits to vegetation, and extreme weather including wildfires.
Resilient Structures: Resilient Structures manufactures power poles and accessories using advanced composite material and proven engineering to fortify the power grid against threats. The RS Fire Shield™ is a lightweight, rigid, composite shell using a self-extinguishing polyurethane resin formulation that provides extended fire protection to protect the pole and mitigate fire-related damage.
Rhizome: Rhizome’s Fire Ignition Reduction and Mitigation (gridFIRM) software application uses geospatial analytics and AI to help utilities performing segment analysis. gridFIRM was developed to assist utilities in the development of their Wildfire Mitigation Plans and can be used to determine the benefits of mitigations in areas such as asset failure/replacement, vegetation management, system hardening, and other mitigations.
Prioritization and Moving Forward with Wildfire Mitigation
The closing Plenary included an all-star team. All the members of the panel have personal experience with wildfire damage and seek to use strategies to increase wildfire mitigation. The plenary moderator was the Chair of the Colorado PUC and he challenged the panel to think about personal cost risk facing utilities and how they can balance this with required wildfire mitigations going forward.
The Managing Director, Power Delivery Support at PacifiCorp indicated that on Labor Day 2020, catastrophic wildfires occurred in Oregon. Since that time, her team focused on operational practices including data awareness on systems, external investments, long-term strategies which prioritize hardening, undergrounding, and deployment of advanced devices.
The Commissioner of the California PUC indicated that utilities need to evaluate all risks and prioritize the mitigation in a quantified fashion. California spent money on vegetation management, utility maintenance and repair work as well as on utility hardening of infrastructure, their risk methodology includes situational awareness using weather stations and Pano AI cameras which allow more precise detection before a fire results.
Xcel Energy’s President described their approach as a mix of solutions to optimize risk reduction in the most cost-effective way. Their risk methodology includes situational awareness using weather stations and Pano AI cameras for more precise detection of smoke. Resiliency and the grid hardening projects include targeted distribution undergrounding and the replacement of small wire with larger wire.
Summary: Collaboration is Key
Bryce Yonker, Grid Forward Executive Director & CEO, closed by returning to retired fire chief Dave Winnacker’s comment that fire is not always bad but is necessary if used for controlled vegetation removal. Yonker recapped the event by noting that wildfires have transformed many locations’ entire distribution grid system design. Everyone at the Symposium has a role in prioritizing wildfire mitigation risk reduction tactics to help prevent and reduce catastrophic wildfires. When risk is elevated, grid operators need to act differently. Having a Wildfire Mitigation Plan and being ready to issue a PSPS (public safety power shutoff) can cover many aspects, and it is important to take this seriously, but these are just the very baseline. Finding ways to bring community together are critical. Bottom line: it’s important for utilities, emergency and firefighter organizations and communities to communicate and collaborate about wildfire mitigation.
At the end of the Wildfire Symposium, Grid Forward asked attendees what topics stood out and could lead to wildfire mitigation actions.
“Utilities will never be able to get catastrophic wildfire risks to zero percent,” he said. “There is tension between wildfire costs and risks, and we all need to pay attention to key lessons as we pay to address this issue.”
“Technology can help us to gain control of catastrophic wildfire ignitions on the grid. There are hundreds of venture-backed companies working on wildfire solutions. There is more hope for proactive wildfire mitigation as new AI technologies are developed and available in the field,” stated Yonker.
Read part 1 and part 2 of this article coming to the Grid Forward blog.
