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Sandia’s wildfire grid resilience program aims to mitigate the ignition and decrease consequences of major wildfires through new tools and improved information pre-wildfire, early response during wildfires to increase safety and minimize damage, and accelerated recovery following wildfires to maximize energy availability.
Better wildfire modeling, monitoring, and planning tools allows significantly reduction in consequences once a wildfire ignites, and better grid devices can reduce the probabilities of grid ignited wildfires.
Responding early and effectively during wildfires is key to reducing wildfire consequences. A better understanding of wildfire ignition and lightning ignition probabilities can improve wildfire response time. Better grid component modeling and monitoring can reduce grid ignited wildfires and better uncertainty modeling and visualization can help decision makers understand when and if Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) are needed and when and if evacuations are needed.
Our vision is to have the right information available at the right time to maximize the resilience of the U.S. electric power grid and maximize the security of people to wildfires, this includes:
Sandia aims to help accelerate electric grid recovery efforts following wildfires by working closely with utilities and employing an agile optimized restoration process to ensure critical infrastructure is returned to service quickly and effectively.
Our research is divided into three main categories of action to help appropriately address wildfire needs: pre-wildfire, during wildfire, and post-wildfire.
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We partner with large and small businesses, universities, and government agencies. With multiple agreement types to select from, partners can access world-class science, engineering, experts, and infrastructure.
Brian J. Pierre, PhD
Manager, Electric Power Systems Research Department
(505) 284-7955
bjpierr@sandia.gov
Sandia’s Wildfire Resilience program is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response under the guidance of Dr. Joseph Dygert. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.