As fires intensify across the American West, utility companies are on the front lines trying to protect the power lines that serve millions of customers. As the frequency of fires and severe storms increases, so does the amount of technology utilities use to maintain operations.
There are approximately 5.5 million miles of power lines in the United States, more than 250 million poles, surrounded by many more trees, and monitoring it all with the human eye is impossible.
This is why artificial intelligence is at the forefront.
New software companies, including Pano AI, Satelytics and California-based AIDash, are jumping on board and are using high technology to reduce risk.
Abhishek Singh, CEO and co-founder of AIDash, told CNBC: “Using satellites, we can monitor every tree and every power pole as frequently as needed to identify challenges and resolve them before they cause an incident. .
Local governments often require utility companies to scan 100 percent of their lines and fix any problems before fire season.
“We spend $10 billion a year alone maintaining trees along power lines,” Singer added. “As labor costs increase and labor is in short supply, it becomes increasingly difficult to detect problems without technology.”
AIDash uses its technology to identify not only current issues but also potential future ones, combining weather data with detailed vegetation data to assess risk levels throughout the fire season and address them. The company does the same for extreme wind and precipitation events.
National Grid, which serves customers in much of the Northeast, is both a customer and investor in AIDash through its venture capital arm, National Grid Partners.
“The most important thing for us is grid reliability,” Andre Turenne, vice president of investments at National Grid Partners, told CNBC, adding that the company has since experienced fewer outages. 30%, and the duration of power outages is reduced by 55%.
“What sets them apart is they’ve built an end-to-end platform, a workflow platform designed for utility engineers to actually deploy and do predictive analytics, deploy crews on the ground, and generally provide our engineers with Provide an end-to-end platform for use,” Turena said.
In addition to National Grid partners, AIDash is supported by Duke EnergyEdison International, Shell Ventures, Lightrock and SE Ventures. To date, its total venture capital investment is US$91.5 million.
As part of the green transition, grid capacity and reliability will become even more important as more and more industries move to all-electric power. National Grid said it plans to spend $75 billion in upgrades over the next five years across jurisdictions in the United Kingdom, New York and Massachusetts.
— CNBC producer Lisa Rizzolo also contributed reporting.
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