Detecting Faults & Ignition Incidents

The two components of fault mitigation that effect wildfire risks are fault count and fault energy. Fault count is the actual number of faults per year on a given circuit. Fault energy is the amount of arc energy associated with any given fault incident. In an ideal scenario the power system of the future will have the ability to reduce fault counts by dynamically monitoring and adapting to high fire risk conditions with minimal need for PSPS (public safety power shutoffs). The system would additionally have features and capabilities to minimize the amount of energy injected into the local vegetation when unavoidable faults and arcing does occur.

While the industry has at its disposal several different hardening options that can reduce fault counts, there remain gaps. The primary gaps are associated with:

• First quantifying exactly how many faults occur on each circuit, under what conditions they occur, and knowing what the exact causes of those faults were.
• Secondly, having consistent methodology to evaluate the different hardening and fault count reduction options against vegetation ignition risk criteria.
• Finally, having criteria for verifying that a reduced fault energy objective will effectively minimize fire start and spread, based on local vegetation species and its condition.

Each of these aspirations speak to the need for more awareness of what is electrically happening across all of the circuits where high fire risks are present.

EPRI’s Lenox test facility regularly evaluates power line monitoring technologies to guide leading practice around continuous electromagnetic monitoring. For more information, please see the grid monitoring link within the wildfire mitigation technology catalog.