Building transmission system resiliency in the face of wildfires.

The Chelan County, Washington, USA community has faced multiple wildfires during the last five years – each of which required action to maintain or restore the transmission system. System reliability is critical for Chelan Public Utility District (PUD), which sells 80 percent of the power generated to parties outside the county in order to keep rates in check for its 50,000 local electric customer-owners. 

Driven by customer input, Chelan PUD brought in our utility risk assessment team to proactively develop a strategic, cost-effective plan to prepare for future wildfires. Alongside Chelan PUD, we evaluated wildfire risk to infrastructure, and the potential for a performance failure of the district’s power transmission system.  

Backed by a team of our transmission engineers, fire ecologists, meteorologists, risk analysts and geospatial information systems (GIS) specialists, we developed a visualisation tool that uses GIS mapping, vegetation surveys, terrain models and other system risk factors to develop a customised risk assessment. We analysed Chelan PUD’s existing assets and distributed them into ranges of relative risk. This enabled the PUD to prioritise its operations and maintenance budgets for immediate upgrades as part of its asset management approach to reducing overall risk profile.