The future of wildfire suppression could be autonomous, and Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is getting its foot in the door early.
The California utility recently joined fire professionals, top state and federal officials, and senior leaders representing philanthropy, insurance providers, and other electric utilities for the an autonomous wildfire suppression demonstration in California.
Organized by Rain and Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, the demonstration took place in in the Silverwood region of the Mojave River Valley next to the San Bernardino National Forest. The demo featured a Black Hawk helicopter equipped with autonomy systems from Lockheed Martin and Rain tracking and engaging multiple fires across the site, pulling water from dip tanks and extinguishing ignitions – all controlled via tablet.
PG&E leaders and a PG&E safety infrastructure protection team (SIPT) attended the demonstration.
“At PG&E, we are committed to ending catastrophic wildfires, and we have implemented several layers of protection and mitigation initiatives that have significantly reduced ignitions, but we know there’s more to do and we recognize the need to develop the technology of tomorrow that will help keep California safe as our climate challenges evolve,” said Mark Quinlan, senior vice president of Wildfire, Emergency, and Operations at PG&E. “To that end, we continue to work closely with innovators and changemakers like Rain and Lockheed Martin to adapt and adopt innovative tools and technologies to keep our customers and hometowns safe. I envision a day in the near future in which PG&E’s fleet of Sikorsky helicopters, which we loan to CAL FIRE and counties in our service area, being equipped with this autonomous capability.”
Alameda-based Rain is a participant in a PG&E research and development project administered through the Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC) program, which is exploring how drone-enabled and autonomous wildfire suppression technologies can reduce response times, reduce risk of ignitions becoming catastrophic wildfires, and reduce operating costs for field crews.
Rain is also a participant in the XPRIZE Wildfire competition, of which PG&E is the co-title sponsor alongside the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Presenting Sponsor Minderoo Foundation, Bonus Prize Sponsor Lockheed Martin and Supporting Sponsors Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, and benefactors Nichola Eliovits and Michael Antonov.
XPRIZE Wildfire is a four-year, $11 million competition to develop and demonstrate fully autonomous capabilities to detect and extinguish wildfires. XPRIZE Wildfire includes two complementary tracks designed to transform how fires are detected, managed and suppressed:
- In the Autonomous Wildfire Response track, teams will need to monitor at least 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) and autonomously suppress a wildfire within 10 minutes of detection.
- In the Space-Based Wildfire Detection & Intelligence track, teams will have one minute to detect all fires across a landscape larger than entire states or countries, and 10 minutes to characterize and report data with the least false positives to two ground stations.
In addition to Rain, through the EPIC project, on separate occasions PG&E will demonstrate and evaluate the viability of other autonomous wildfire suppression technologies in various operating environments.
