IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2022 - 104

Ângelo Sarmento
E-REDES
electricity infrastructure resilience to wildfires
C
104
CLIMATE CHANGE HAS HAD
multiple effects in the last years, with
uncontrollable wildfires being one of the
most tragic. These events not only affect
electrical grid service continuity but also
put the distribution service operator under
pressure to improve planning, maintenance,
and grid management. Efforts
are evolving in a continuous improvement
cycle toward identifying best practices,
enabling the overhead transmission
aspects of the grid to achieve a state of
residual risk to the wildfire threat.
In my view, based on 15 years with
the E-REDES (the Portuguese distribution
system operator [DSO]) board of
directors, it is not enough for a company
to have a track record in innovative
electricity infrastructure planning,
maintenance, and grid management
efforts. In a world where everything
is under greater scrutiny, DSOs must
open their technical ecosystem to the
world. They need to show that their initiatives
aggregate other areas of knowledge
to boost steps that address the
looming issues.
In Portugal, 2017 proved that the human
desire to contain nature events to
time-based seasons was an unsuccessful
effort against the reality of climate
change. In that year, two wildfire outbreaks
with catastrophic consequences
occurred outside the critical wildfire
season, defined in Portugal from 1 July
to 30 September. The same is happening
across the world, not only in geographies
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2021.3122776
Date of current version: 19 January 2022
ieee power & energy magazine
with latitudes similar to
Portugal's (e.g., California
and Greece), but also
in colder latitudes (e.g.,
Canada and Siberia).
These events created
innumerable discussions
throughout a society
in shock, struggling to
understand what had
failed. In Portugal, because
a larger proportion
of high- and mediumvoltage
electrical distribution
grids is above
ground compared to
neighboring countries, E -REDES
found its efforts to promote the compatibility
of electricity infrastructure
with nature under scrutiny.
The scrutiny around the DSO and
In a world
where
everything is
under greater
scrutiny, DSOs
must open
their technical
ecosystem to
the world.
Aggregation
Efforts
In late 2018, E-REDES
decided to aggregate
its efforts in vegetation
management under the
umbrel la of " Project
VEGA. " This project has
six workstreams-five
of them technical and
one cross-cutting communication-along
with
a steering committee involving
our top management
that has since been
setting the direction of
improvements and communication with
stakeholders in this area.
Each of the technical workstreams
transmission system operator fire risk is
becoming common around the world.
It was amplified after the PG&E bankruptcy
filing in the United States.
Since then, energy companies with
electricity transmission or distribution
operations have seen an increase in
stakeholder inquiries about efforts to
manage wildfire impacts.
Internal brainstorming led us to aggregate
all of the initiatives related to
wildfires under a broad project. More
recently, we split off vegetation management
from general grid maintenance
management. Believing that our experience
could be successfully implemented
across congeners, in the following paragraphs,
I share how this effort was developed
and the lessons learned.
focuses on specific areas, including the
following:
✔ Benchmarking and research and
development: Search for best
practices through participation
in national and international
projects and workshops and
promote research by challenging
outside investigation teams
from academia and elsewhere
to search for solutions to related
problems.
✔ Grid and vegetation planning:
Explore the potential of digitalization
and implement innovative
solutions to plan in advance, predicting
potential problems that
might arise from the grid coexisting
with vegetation.
(continued on p. 102)
january/february 2022
in my view
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2022

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