APS uses new technology on power poles to help prevent wildfires

 Arizona Public Service has introduced new fire prevention technology this year, some of which you can find directly on their powerlines.

APS serves 1.4 million households and businesses with 38,000 miles of power lines.

With so much territory to cover, safety is a top priority.

So, the goal of this technology is to track weather conditions that could fuel a fire before or after it sparks.

Starting this year, APS began installing weather stations and cameras on some of its power poles.

“Wind speed, wind direction is on the left side as your looking at it and on the right-hand side is a rain gage,” described Wade Ward, APS manager of fire mitigation.

They now have 55 weather stations and about 35 cameras across the state and they’ll soon begin installing more.

“To understand better understand what is happening on our circuits,” Ward said. “When you look right down one of our right aways we better understand what the weather conditions are and what the fire conditions potentially could be.”

All this information gets fed back into their system which provides real time fire conditions before or after a spark.

“This will allow us to look directly at all of our weather stations and all of our cameras,” Ward said. “This allows us to get that information first hand as to actually what is happening out on a particular line.”

It also helps APS decide if they need a Public Safety Power Shutoff.

The goal of a PSPS is to prevent powerlines or the electric system from starting a wildfire through a spark or a downed wire during extreme fire conditions. This includes high winds that could blow a tree into a powerline.

APS said this will mostly impact rural parts of the High Country, not major towns like Flagstaff or Prescott.

They use precautionary and fire tracking technology to make sure as few people are impacted as possible.

“The data that we get from here, from these weather stations and cameras will allow us to be very surgical about where those areas are for PSPS and make sure we’re taking outages only in the areas necessary,” Ward said. “So in extreme weather conditions, particularly wind.”

Thankfully, no PSPS has been called so far this year, but all of these precautions are to keep communities safe.

“We are quite frequently impacted by wildfire and we want to make sure we do everything we can to reduce the risk and increase the customer reliability,” Ward said.

APS also suggests updating your contact information on their website to keep you up to date when there is a power outage or PSPS in your area. You can find that information here.