As another wildfire season passes, many utilities, mostly in the West, are thinking about their mitigation strategy for next year and beyond.
In Washington, Puget Sound Energy (PSE) is undertaking a pilot program to evaluate the performance of the Gridscope, a solar-powered sensor from Gridware mounted on utility poles for wildfire mitigation, fault detection, and reliability improvements.
Gridscope devices are roughly the size of a toaster and can be installed on a utility pole with four screws. Additionally, they are mounted below a pole’s electrical space, which the utility said makes the installation process quick and safe, since installers don’t need to turn the power off.
In the pilot, PSE will install 250 devices across seven miles of overhead circuits in Issaquah and Olympia. PSE said it has three primary use cases for the Gridscopes:
- Wildfire risk mitigation
- High-impedance fault detection
- Reducing outage times by identifying disturbances and their locations quicker than usual
A Gridscope is comprised of multiple sensors, including those that measure vibration, sound, temperature, electric fields, and more. Additionally, since they are solar-powered, they can continue to operate during an outage or a Public Safety Power Shutoff.
When multiple Gridscope devices are installed on neighboring poles, they can work in tandem to collect data on their surroundings. The data is then consolidated and processed with machine learning to detect any disturbances and their location. The devices aim to categorize events by their data “signature,” such as vegetation contact, animal contact, broken wires, vehicles striking poles, and more. Once a disturbance is detected, the devices will send an alert to PSE for a response.
The pilot program launched in August, and PSE hopes to have enough information by Spring 2025 to evaluate the program’s effectiveness, consider other use cases, and put together the next steps.
