Real-Time Vegetation Risk Integration in Utility Damage and Outage Modelling to Improve Resilience of the Utility Grid to Extreme Weather

The reliability of the electrical grid is a matter of both national security and qualify of life. The frequency of weather-related outages are expected to increase due to climate change. Electrical utilities in the United States spend over $70 billion annually on storm restoration. The number of outages and cost can be significantly decreased with better information on vegetation risk near critical infrastructure and assessing key vulnerabilities. StormImpact Inc. will use NASA Earth Observation data to build machine learning (ML) vegetation growth and risk models that will allow electrical utilities to proactively prepare for storms and improve their infrastructure resilience. We anticipate cost savings of 10% to 20% for utility customers due to improved vegetation management efficiency. We will leverage these data to provide enhanced StormImpact prediction models and a new national power outage forecast model. These innovations will greatly improve storm preparedness, optimize vegetation management, and improve the resiliance of the electrical grid in a changing climate.

This Phase I R/R&D project is responsive to the SBIR Ignite solicitation request for "Technologies Using NASA Data to Foster Climate Resilience." The vegetation growth and vegetation risk products that we are developing have applications for assessing infrastructure damage and wildfire risk. Vegetation management products will address a gap in the market by providing electrical utilities with accurate and cost-effective guidance so that they can identify when and where there are vegetation management issues. In addition, there are markets and applications for these products such as wildfire risk management, insurance, and forestry.

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