As fires intensify in the western United States, utility companies are on the front lines, working to protect the power lines that serve millions of customers. And as the frequency of fires and severe storms increases, so does the amount of technology that utility companies use to keep things running.
The U.S. has roughly 5.5 million miles of power lines on more than a quarter billion poles surrounded by even more trees, and keeping a human eye on all of it is impossible.
That’s why artificial intelligence is taking the lead.
Enter new software companies like Pano AI, Satelytics and California-based AIDash, which are tapping high tech to lower risk.
“Using satellites, we can monitor each and every tree, each and every pole, as frequently as we want, identify the challenges and fix them before they cause an accident,” Abhishek Singh, CEO and co-founder of AIDash, told CNBC.
Utility companies are often required by local governments to scan 100% of their lines and address any issues before fire season.
“This entire exercise of maintaining trees along power lines is a $10 billion annual spend in us alone,” Singh added. “With the labor cost increasing, and shortage of labor, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the problems without technology.”
AIDash uses its tech to not only identify current issues but also potential future ones, integrating weather data with detailed vegetation data to gauge risk levels throughout the fire season and address them. The company does the same for extreme wind and precipitation events.
National Grid, which services customers in much of the northeast, is both a client of and investor in AIDash through its venture capital arm, National Grid Partners.
“The most important thing for us is the grid reliability,” Andre Turenne, VP of investments at National Grid Partners, told CNBC, adding that the company has seen a 30% reduction in outages and a 55% reduction in the duration of outages since using AIDash.
“Their differentiator was they built an end-to-end platform, a workflow platform designed for utility engineers to actually deploy and do predictive analytics, deploy the crews on the ground and generally provide a platform for our engineers to use end-to-end,” said Turenne.
In addition to National Grid Partners, AIDash is backed by Duke Energy, Edison International, Shell Ventures, Lightrock and SE Ventures. Its total venture capital funding so far is $91.5 million.
As part of the green transition, and as more industries make the switch to all-electric power, grid capacity and reliability will become even more vital. Over the next five years, National Grid said it plans to spend $75 billion in its jurisdictions in the United Kingdom, as well as in New York and Massachusetts, to upgrade for both.
— CNBC producer Lisa Rizzolo contributed reporting.