Sandia National Laboratories researchers on Aug. 14 told the New Mexico Senate Technology and Telecommunications Committee they are developing models and field demonstrations to reduce wildfires started by electric infrastructure and to limit wildfire damage to the grid.

The work covers four areas: pre‑fire monitoring and early warning, modeling and mitigation during fires, post‑fire recovery optimization and long‑term planning to prioritize investment. "Almost every utility we talk to is very focused in this," said Brian Pierre, manager of Sandia's Power Systems Research Department, describing utility priorities to avoid equipment‑ignited fires and protect critical facilities.

Why it matters: large blazes can destroy critical components such as large transformers that are slow and costly to replace, shut down service to customers and escalate to cascading outages that affect entire regions. Sandia stressed that accurate vegetation and wind data, combined with weather forecasts and grid modeling, are needed to forecast risk and to plan targeted mitigation.

Sandia described several practical tools and findings. It is using satellite imagery trained with ground‑truth measurements in the Gila National Forest to produce dynamic, machine‑learning vegetation and fuel‑type maps that update wildfire risk in near real time. That data feeds wildfire‑spread models and contingency analyses that pair a modeled fire footprint with grid simulations to forecast which lines or substations could be affected in the next hours or days.

The lab demonstrated a number of ignition and protection research areas. On lightning and arc ignition, researchers have run repeated experimental strikes on vegetation and components to build physics‑driven ignition models. They are also studying how contamination on insulators increases flashover risk that could lead to arcs near vegetation.

Sandia described a protective‑relaying demonstration that uses faster sensors and machine learning to identify faults far faster than conventional relays. "We've shown around 1.4 milliseconds instead of 100," Pierre said, adding that shortening the time a fault is energized reduces the probability a nearby tree or brush will ignite. Demos have included a microgrid at Kirkland Air Force Base and an ongoing field trial with Roosevelt County Electric Cooperative in eastern New Mexico, where the Sandia relay runs in parallel with traditional protection.

Speakers also discussed tradeoffs utilities face in choosing mitigation strategies. Sandia cited undergrounding distribution lines as an effective but very costly option — "the cost to underground a distribution line is somewhere from $2,000,000 to $6,000,000 per mile," Pierre said — a price some small co‑ops told Sandia was infeasible. Those co‑ops instead emphasize improved vegetation management in rights‑of‑way. The committee also asked about stationary batteries and microgrids to avoid the impacts of preemptive public‑safety power shutoffs. "Yeah. So that is some of the work that's being done," Pierre said when asked about station­ary batteries and microgrids at vulnerable feeders.

Sandia previewed PyroKit, a mapping and planning tool under development intended for smaller utilities and co‑ops. The tool combines dynamic vegetation maps, weather, burn probability forecasts, contingency analyses (grid+wildfire), and scenario comparison to help prioritize investments and calculate public‑safety power‑shutoff tradeoffs. Sandia said it demoed PyroKit to PNM and plans further demonstration partnerships.

The lab also noted the importance of visualization and messaging during evacuations and public‑safety power‑shutoff decisions. Pierre showed evacuation maps from the Hermit’s Peak complex and said inconsistent color schemes caused confusion — agencies had switched, at times, between red meaning "evacuate" and green meaning "evacuate," complicating public interpretation.

Committee members asked utility and policy questions about where to place batteries or microgrids, what vegetation‑management inputs the models require and which New Mexico regions are most vulnerable; Sandia pointed to forested transmission corridors and to focused work in the Gila National Forest in partnership with PNM. Pierre emphasized the value of more and better historical fire data to train models.

Next steps: Sandia will continue field demonstrations with utilities and co‑ops (PNM and Roosevelt County Co‑op were named) and refine tools such as PyroKit for operational use. No formal action was taken by the committee during the presentation.

Taper: The presentation underlined that there is no single solution for every utility: undergrounding, vegetation management, protective relays, microgrids and targeted investments are all part of the toolbox, and utilities will need to choose a mix based on cost and local conditions.