As wildfire risk increases across the northeast USA, National Grid is taking action to improve grid resilience. The company has announced a collaboration with Rhizome, a climate resilience planning platform, to deploy advanced AI technology that identifies and prevents wildfire risks across its transmission and distribution networks in Massachusetts, New York, and the UK.
Rhizome’s gridFIRM platform, launched in July 2024, quantifies long-term risks of utility asset-related wildfires. “This … new tool will allow us to pinpoint and address risks within our transmission and distribution systems while minimising costs for customers.” said Casey Kirkpatrick, director of Strategic Engineering, National Grid.
Mishal Thadani, co-founder and CEO, Rhizome says recent experience shows that wildfire risk is not a regional problem but an increasingly global one. The implementation of the gridFIRM platform across National Grid’s service territories is expected to enable it to identify high-risk areas where utility assets could potentially ignite wildfires, quantify and prioritise wildfire risks across transmission and distribution networks, develop ‘cost-effective, multi-value’ wildfire prevention and response strategies, and enhance overall grid resilience planning capabilities.
Wildfire risk, once considered primarily a West Coast concern in the USA, is increasingly affecting the Northeast. In 2024 alone New York and Massachusetts experienced a total of 2626 wildfires, more than twice the number the previous year. The health and safety risks and the financial implications of this increasingly geographically diverse trend, make proper resilience planning and preparedness a critical priority.
