WALNUT CREEK — Every fire season, especially under dangerous fire conditions, homeowners brace for devastating wildfires and extended power outages in their neighborhoods.
Tim Barat knows all too well how monstrous wildfires can devastate a community. He remembers the exact moment he discovered the link between power lines and forest fires.
“In Australia I was originally a lineman and unfortunately I experienced what is now called ‘Black Saturday’ and this was an event where in one day 50 fires were set by power lines and 187 people died and I was there on the ground and we worked there along with the first responders,” Barat said.
Motivated to make a difference, he co-founded Gridware with UC Berkeley classmate Hall Chen.
They created a solar-powered sensor that continuously measures small movements in power lines and poles.
Using artificial intelligence, they can identify specific vibrations and the conditions that cause them. Once these vibrations or anomalies are detected, Gridware technology can alert energy companies to the danger in real time. It is then up to the utility company to shut off power to those lines.
“We like to think of the grid as a guitar where the conductors are the strings and the sticks are the frets,” says Chen, co-founder and chief technology officer of Gridware. “When a physical event occurs that affects the conductors, it creates vibrations that are very different from what you see every day. That’s why we monitor those vibrations at the pole level.”
Barat, an experienced electrical lineman, demonstrated how it works at the Richmond field station.
“This happens hundreds of times, even in a 24-hour period, where a branch breaks and falls onto the lines like this and stays on the lines for hours before it actually ignites, and only when it ignites does that happen.” fall to the ground and then light a fire,” Barat explained. “So we detect the moment the vegetation comes into contact with the lines.”
Gridware’s technology is not just about preventing forest fires. It can also help crews restore electricity more quickly after an outage.
“Every time you turn off the power, the utility company has to patrol every meter of the line and that can take hours. By knowing exactly what happened – where it happened – they can send crews straight to the location with the right equipment, remove the hazard or make the repairs and turn the power back on quickly,” Barat said.
Gridware’s sensors also monitor real-time environmental weather factors such as temperature, pressure, wind and humidity. In California, they place their sensors in the highest risk areas, which cover a distance of a thousand kilometers from our electricity grid.
“I grew up in California,” Chen said. “To actually be able to make a difference for the communities around my home state and also for other states across the country – it’s good for the soul.”
“I remember the first time we got a call back from the utility company with confirmation that we had stopped a wildfire,” Barat recalls. “Those were their exact words: ‘Without your warning, this would have been a forest fire.’ That’s a very emotional experience.”
For Barat and Chen, a future safe from devastating wildfires drives their passion.
Gridware has installed approximately 13,000 sensors across the country in eight states, working with 18 utilities, including PG&E.
Maria Lee
