The US National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) has received updates from members on projects under the Wildfire Assessment and Resilience for Networks consortium (Warn), set up to combat wildfire threats and protect electricity supplies.
More than 30 participating co-ops, wildfire mitigation technology providers and NRECA staff gave project updates during NRECA Research’s second annual Warn consortium meeting, held last month in Washington, DC.
Sharing an update from the meeting, NRECA says its research team manages the project, with Colorado-based Holy Cross Energy serving as lead co-op, and highlights the scheme as an example of principle 6, co-operation among co-ops.
Holy Cross already operates a wildfire mitigation plan. On its website, it says “a layered approach to wildfire safety helps minimise risk, strengthen system resilience, and protect the communities we serve on a daily basis.
“Wildfire risk in our service territory is influenced by factors such as drought, vegetation conditions, terrain accessibility, and extreme weather events. To address these challenges, we use a holistic strategy that combines proactive vegetation management, ongoing inspection and maintenance, high-tech system safety settings, and community engagement.”
“You have a group of co-operatives doing what we do best,” NRECA chief operating officer Jeffrey Connor told the Washington event, “coming together and collaborating and bringing multiple parties to an effort that individually would have been burdensome and difficult for any co-operative to tackle on its own.”
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The Warn projects, funded partly by the Department of Energy’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnership grant programme, will improve system reliability and resilience and help mitigate the risk of utility-ignited fires, adds NRECA.
The initiative will also help co-ops assess the value of wildfire-related resilience upgrades – information that can guide investments in mitigation nationwide.
Warn is made up of 35 co-ops that banded together to apply for funding through GRIP, a $10.5bn NRECA-backed programme created through the bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021. Altogether, Warn will provide more than $140m in wildfire mitigation funding to co-ops across 17 Western and Midwest states.
“The work you’re leading is reshaping how America prepares for wildfires, how co-operatives protect the communities they serve, and how our nation strengthens the grid under conditions that are evolving faster than ever,” Vicki Tran, deputy assistant secretary of the DOE’s Office of Electricity, told co-ops at the event.
Seven co-ops have so far been cleared to start construction on Warn projects:
- Holy Cross Energy (Glenwood Springs, Colorado): Replacing overhead power lines in Garfield County with underground infrastructure.
- Springer Electric Cooperative (Springer, New Mexico): Installing fire-resistant mesh wraps on 371 poles across the Kiowa National Grasslands in Colfax and Harding Counties, New Mexico.
- Beartooth Electric Cooperative (Red Lodge, Montana): Undergrounding 5.1 miles of power line in its East Rosebud Corridor in 2026-2027.
- Capital Electric Cooperative (Bismarck, North Dakota): Converting an 11-mile, three-phase power line to underground conductors.
- Consumers Power Inc. (Philomath, Oregon): Undergrounding circuits and upgrading meter bases in the remote Santiam Canyon, where wildfires destroyed much of its system in 2020.
- Cotton Electric Cooperative (Walters, Oklahoma): Performing a range of upgrades including vegetation management, copper conductor replacement, pole inspection and replacement, and recloser modernisation.
- Highline Electric Association (Holyoke, Colorado): Installing 28 reclosers at various points on the co-op’s distribution line and within distribution substations to automatically detect faults and stop and restart power flows based on wildfire risk.
Other Warn members are making progress on their projects and may get the greenlight soon to start construction, said Lauren Khair, senior director of energy research and resilience for NRECA’s Business and Technology Strategies group.
(image: Phil Augustavo/Getty)
