CESER and Sandia National Lab have developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-based solution to help prevent the ignition of wildfires by electrical systems experiencing a fault.
Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response
August 26, 2025
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Earlier this year wildfires ravaged landscapes across the country, making it more important than ever to protect the nation’s electric grid against natural hazards. In line with President Trump’s June 2025 executive order on Empowering Commonsense Wildfire Prevention and Response, the Department of Energy (DOE) is focused on strengthening wildfire mitigation and modernizing wildfire prevention and response.
DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) has partnered with Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) to develop a grid resilience program designed to protect the nation’s electric grid from wildfires while also eliminating grid-initiated wildfires.
“Smarter wildfire modeling, monitoring, and planning tools help us minimize the impact of wildfires to the electric grid, and better grid devices can reduce the probabilities of grid ignited wildfires,” said Dr. Brian Pierre, Manager of the Electric Power Systems Research Department for SNL. For example, SNL has developed an electric grid monitoring and control device (pictured) that can quickly and autonomously de-energize sections of the electric grid during events that could ignite a wildfire.
The electric grid has several protection systems in place, including circuit breakers, relays, reclosures, and fuses, to help prevent system downtime or equipment damage. These systems are especially important when fortifying the grid against extreme events or natural hazards like wildfires.
Protective equipment is designed to detect grid irregularities or threats and respond quickly to eliminate system faults while avoiding system issues or equipment damage. As part of the grid resilience program, DOE and SNL have developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-based protective relaying solution to help prevent the ignition of wildfires by electrical systems experiencing a fault.
The solution integrates AI and high-speed sensing to create an advanced protection system that can locate and isolate faults approximately 100 times faster than traditional protection equipment. The system can process and analyze large datasets in real-time with AI, making grid protection systems more effective and applicable to the electrical distribution system. This advancement will be instrumental in preventing future wildfires and improving overall grid resilience and reliability.
DOE and SNL are now partnering with utilities to put this new technology into action. Planning is currently underway to test the AI-based protective relaying solution on utility partners’ electricity distribution systems. These demonstrations will show utilities the effectiveness of AI in detecting and isolating system faults and preventing electric grid wildfire ignition through real-world test results.
Learn more about the DOE’s partnership with SNL on wildfire electric grid resilience and AI-based protective relays for electric grid resilience.