Oracle Utilities, in partnership with MICATU, a leading developer of grid-edge solutions, recently announced new innovative technology to help utilities reduce wildfire risk from power lines.
Why is grid resilience important?
Power disruptions can be caused by a number of factors, including cybersecurity threats, weather events, fallen trees and vegetation overgrowth, aging infrastructure, high energy demand, or human error. When the supply of energy available to power homes and businesses becomes overloaded by the demand, the local grid fails, and a blackout occurs. Widespread blackouts can last from a few hours up to several days until service can be restored, which puts vulnerable populations at risk during extreme heat or cold and can cause significant business disruption. Enhancing grid resilience enables can help mitigate this risk and improve recovery time for restoring power.
How can technology help?
Renewable energy lightens the load
Technology can play a key role in grid resilience to combat both physical and cyber threats. Distributed energy resources (DERs) are small energy resources that can store and generate electricity, connecting to the grid to provide additional capacity to communities during an outage. Residential DERs can include backup home battery power, solar power, smart thermostats, and smart EV charging for vehicles. While helpful for consumers, DERs pose a challenge to grid operators attempting to balance the load, or demand on the grid, and may not have insight into the private systems that consumers have installed in their homes. Oracle’s Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) is one way we help customers with all aspects of real-time distribution monitoring, optimization, and control.
Mitigating wildfire risk
Power line maintenance and monitoring are essential for grid resilience in areas that are at high risk for extreme weather events, high winds, and droughts exacerbated by climate change. Several of the most destructive and costly wildfires in the United States in recent years were caused by power lines encountering trees or vegetation. Notably, the Dixie Fire in 2001 burned over 963,000 acres of land in California, destroyed several communities and historical sites, and cost $637 million to extinguish. Power line disturbance detection systems are a type of technology that can identify issues with power lines and send a signal to a control room where a technician will analyze the data and information available to determine a response. One of the challenges with these detection systems is that high impedance faults generate a low fault current, making them more difficult to automatically detect.
AI speeds up detection and reaction time
Oracle’s active edge network management solution combines Oracle AI signal prognostics that enables fast risk detection and active network management disturbance mitigation response at the grid edge. It is a comprehensive centrally managed, distributed intelligence approach to the power grid that enables grid operators greater levels of monitoring and control and can solve many of the challenges that DERs and other grid asset risks present.
MICATU, a leading developer of grid-edge solutions, has developed certusEDGE™, a revolutionary grid-edge management platform that delivers real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and autonomous control. certusEDGE™ integrates seamlessly with Oracle Utilities active edge network management solution to predict and prevent faults and anticipate issues like high-impedance faults.
As grid sensors continuously scan a utility line’s current, voltage and other measurements, Oracle AI installed locally on certusEDGE™ will quickly detect disturbances and the type of event from a predetermined database of potential disturbances and will initiate the most appropriate response. A tree falling on a utility line, for example, would be detected by the device and the AI agent within the device will react within seconds, shutting down power to the line and dispatching a crew for inspection. Near real-time detection and diagnostics can improve response time from minutes to a few seconds, mitigating wildfire risk and improving grid resiliency.
What’s next?
MICATU and Oracle Utilities will continue collaborating on ways to improve the solution over time. Oracle’s Industry Lab, a test kitchen for innovative technology solutions focused on tackling the world’s most complex challenges across various industries, brings together experts from Oracle Energy and Water, Oracle Construction and Engineering, and Oracle Communications. Two major utilities are participating in the development working group taking place at the Lab.
Visit Oracle’s Industry Lab today to learn more about how Oracle’s innovative technology is building a safer and more resilient future.