For much of its history, NorthWestern Energy has focused on making sure there is electricity in each of its 18,000 miles of overhead power lines.
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However, as more people move into what’s called the Wildland Urban Interface- areas away from town and neighbors- NWE has had to change its mindset.
Each of those power lines is a potential fire risk. Jason Merkel, NorthWestern’s Vice President of Operations, says the utility is now having to take a more risk-based approach to make sure its resources don’t spark a potentially catastrophic fire.
NorthWestern Energy is learning from others. In 2018, a broken cable hook started the Camp Fire in California. It burned 153,000 acres and killed 85 people. A broken power line in Hawaii in 2023 caused the Lahaina Fire, which scorched 2,100 acres but also killed 102 people.
NorthWestern’s Fire Mitigation Program has grown over the past several years and has taken on different forms depending on the risk presented.
The utility has 18,000 miles of overhead lines in Montana. It has divided that into 38,000 separate segments.
Each segment is monitored, with those in high-risk areas receiving closer attention. That’s where the real work comes in.
Vegetation removal has always been part of NorthWestern’s procedures, but with more power lines being added in fire-prone vegetation, it has become a regular task.
Another tool is what the utility calls Grid Hardening. That’s replacing resources in fire-prone areas with wires, poles, and insulators less prone to failure.
Situational Awareness is the fire mitigation team’s greatest focus, and it does that with several different tools.
NorthWestern Energy’s Fire Operations Director says his team takes in several pieces of data to determine a course of action in high-risk areas, at any given time.
Nate Linder says up-to-date information on its infrastructure is put together with immediate weather information, and then any one of those 38,000 segments can be powered down as a last resort to potential fire starts.
The weather information comes from Matthew Sargent, NWE full-time meteorologist.
He says 95 weather stations, installed across the state, can send him immediate information on wind, temperature and humidity in those locations. If certain parameters for those are reached, the station texts or calls him. He then can make real-time decisions for those segments based on that immediate information.
Sargent also says data gathered this season will be used in the future as those weather stations begin building a database of information. He says that makes future decisions much more accurate.
NorthWestern Energy’s Fire Mitigation Manager, Shane Colman, says a series of smoke cameras also help the team assess conditions in high-risk areas. These publicly accessible cameras are monitored 24/7 and used to detect potential fire starts in remote areas. The cameras are also being used by other agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, BLM, and DNRC.
Colman notes that when these cameras detect a potential fire start, they not only tell NWE whether it was by one of their lines but also show proximity to those lines in the event of fire spread and proximity to gas lines, which could become a problem for fire line creation.
Fire team members all say weather stations, new power lines, smoke cameras, and vegetation removal are all valuable tools to help prevent a potential fire; the best resource in these high-risk areas is homeowners creating defensible space around their properties.
NorthWestern Energy’s Operations VP Jason Merkel also notes that cutting power to any one of those 38,000 segments is the ultimate fire mitigation decision; he says so far that is a decision Northwestern Energy has never had to make.
