Case study
PSE Facing Increased Storm and Wildfire Risk.
Puget Sound Energy (PSE), operates in a region prone to severe windstorms, heavy rain and dense vegetation.
As a result they face a major challenge maintaining observability of de-energized circuits during major storm events. When lines go down or are preemptively de-energized for safety measures, conventional monitoring tools offer no visibility or understanding of real-time grid conditions on those circuits. This lack of situational awareness hampers PSE’s ability to quickly assess damage, prioritize field response, and safely restore service—especially in remote or heavily forested areas.
The issue directly impacts resiliency, as the capacity to respond, recover, and adapt during extreme weather events is constrained by blind spots in the system that lead to hazard awareness delay. Enhancing observability on de-energized lines therefore is a top priority to reducing outage durations, coordinating safe restoration efforts, and building a grid that can withstand and bounce back from the increasing frequency and severity of major storms.
For the first time we could understand what was happening on de-energized lines - during an event, not after. Pre-patrol intelligence transforms blind searches into targeted repairs and faster restoration times for our customers.
~ Alex Brotherston, P.E. Consulting (Principal) Engineer
PSE Sees 100% Accuracy Pinpointing Hazards
In mid-2024 Gridware started a pilot with PSE with a cross section of circuits spanning different geographies within service territory that experiences diverse weather. As part, Gridware Active Grid Response (AGR) was deployed in wildfire risk areas with reliability issues and increased risk of high impedance faults. In the span of just a few months, across this limited cross section of PSE’s grid, Gridware AGR alerted the utility to 22 events with a location accuracy of 100%. Gridware AGR’s ability to identify outages in advance of patrols was also evaluated – with 14 outage cause predictions made – successfully predicting all 14 event causes.
Bomb Cyclone meets Gridware AGR
On November 19th, 2024, a bomb cyclone struck the Pacific Northwest, battering PSE’s service territory with hurricane force winds over 70 miles per hour. Trees fell on power lines, hundreds of homes and businesses, damaging critical transportation infrastructure and highways.
The storm caused nearly a half million customer outages. This included power loss to a circuit where Gridware AGR was deployed, but had yet to sustain any damage. 50 minutes later a large tree fell and caused severe damage, followed by another destructive tree strike 10 minutes later a quarter mile away on the same circuit.
Given the severity of the storm, a utility would typically need to wait until the storm subsided to identify issues. Only then would they send assessors to patrol and determine the extent of damage and repairs needed, after which certain damage would be prioritized depending on severity and criticality of the load impacted e.g. number of customers.
With Gridware AGR’s ability to measure and understand events on de-energized infrastructure, PSE was notified of destructive strikes in real-time. This enables the capability to remotely triage and prioritize repairs in the middle of the storm, greatly enhancing the speed of restoration and resiliency of the system after the storm.
