Colorado No. 2 in U.S. for homes at risk for wildfire, electric company using AI to cut risk
Colorado has the second highest number of homes at risk for wildfire in the country, according to a new study. The study by CoreLogic finds California leads the nation, followed by Colorado, and then Texas.
Researchers say more than 300,000 homes here are at risk. Many of them are in an area served by Core Electric, a power company that is going high-tech to prevent wildfires.
Core Electric serves about 375,000 people in one of the highest-risk areas in the country. Its lines span 5,000 square miles from Parker to Woodland Park and Bailey to Bennett.
TJ Haves, Core Electric's District Manager for Conifer, has been using cutting-edge technology for years in hopes of preventing a mega-fire like Maui or Marshall in his district.
"We have what we call fire settings and so on these high-risk, high wind days, high fire danger days, we go to our alternate settings. So when there's a fault on the line, if a tree hits the line, that line will open up instantaneously (and cut power)," said Haves.
Havens also dispatches two-person teams every day to inspect the lines pole by pole from the ground up while drones give a top-down view, "They're looking at high heat issues, maybe something's tracking, it's not visible yet but there are heat issues going on. We have a strict policy in place that when we get a level four issue on that pole that we get on it immediately and get that issue corrected and then again with that, we're not fixing that one issue, we're fixing everything on the pole."
The utility uses satellites too, equipped with artificial intelligence, to look for potential threats.
"They take pretty high-resolution images from that satellites that can scan a huge amount of area in a short time, both in the visual and near-infrared," says Jordan Ambrogi, head of wildfire mitigation at Core Electric.
He says they can not only see how close trees are to lines but how healthy those trees are. The utility is also using artificial intelligence to analyze data from cameras posted in the highest-risk areas.
"They are taking 360-degree images every minute that is analyzed by artificial intelligence to look for smoke plumes, smoke starts," says Ambrogi.
But the goal, he says, is to stop fires from ever starting and he says Core Electric spends tens of millions of dollars every year to do just that, "When it comes to mitigating wildfire risk it is one of the most responsible ways we can invest our money."
Havens says most of Core Electric's employees not only work in the area, but live in the area. He says wildfire prevention is personal for them and many, he says, have organized their own neighborhood mitigation efforts.
