As utilities work on one of the biggest electric grid expansions in decades, they are focusing on wildfire resilience after years of destructive fires. Wildfires damage equipment, force utilities to cut power and reduce solar generation. This year, wildfires have exceeded the 10-year average for both the number of fires and acres burned, creating a need to prioritize wildfire resistance.

To do so, utilities have begun combining weather models, wildfire behavior, infrastructure data and population impacts to determine where investment should be prioritized, according to Seth Guikema, a University of Michigan professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Undergrounding is a method used to improve resilience to hurricanes, winter storms and other hazards. It may also be helpful during wildfires.

Managing aging infrastructure is another challenge that could be affected during crises. The country needs thousands of miles of new transmission lines to connect renewables, storage and data centers. In addition, much of the grid needs to be replaced.

Utilities are searching for opportunities to build wildfire resistance into these projects, but cost is always a concern.

“How much are we willing to increase our utility rates to do undergrounding and things like that?” he asked. He said sometimes it’s the regulators rather than the utilities that are limiting resilience investments because of cost concerns.

Nevertheless, some states such as California, which has already spent billions of dollars on wildfire mitigation, are requiring investor-owned utilities to publish wildfire resilience plans, while others have adopted similar approaches. Some California utilities are trying microgrids that disconnect from the main grid to keep supplying power during outages as wildfire risk grows.

According to Nadia Panossian, an electrical engineering researcher at the National Laboratory of the Rockies, utilities are going beyond “basic minimum maintenance” toward longer-term upgrades that take wildfire risk into consideration. Some utilities in the West are conducting public safety power shutoffs.

“They shut the power off because you’d rather have a short-term power outage than a catastrophic fire,” she said.