Ieee Pes Tr130 - Protection Methods Used To Reduce Wildfire Risks Due To Transmission and Distribution Lines

The IEEE PSRC Line Protection Subcommittee authorized the formation of a working group to produce a report titled “Protection Methods Used to Reduce Wildfire Risks Due to Transmission and Distribution Lines”. This report (published as TR130 by IEEE on 05 June 2025) documents methods and technologies that protection engineers can apply to reduce the number of faults, fault energy, and the probability of power system faults igniting wildfires. There is no single method available that will prevent faults on overhead transmission and distribution lines from igniting fires. This report introduces some emerging technologies and applications, and the study to prevent wildfires is producing new applications very quickly and not all emerging efforts can be covered. Wildfires (bush fires and forest fires) have become more frequent, intense, and damaging in recent years. The impact of fires is made worse by the increased development in Wildland Urban Interface areas and related land management practices that tend to result in large amounts of fuel that can lead to more intense fires. Extending electrical infrastructure into these areas increases the risk of igniting a catastrophic wildfire. Over the last decade, some of these mega fires have approached 400,000 hectares and destroyed more than 10,000 homes in addition to human fatalities and environmental harm. Electrical equipment is not the largest cause of wildfires, but the fires initiated by these tend to become larger and more damaging due to their relationship to the environmental conditions at the time of ignition (i.e., high-temperatures, dry-fuel, and high-wind conditions). The report covers different ways that electrical faults can ignite wildfires, relay applications that can reduce ignition risk, different grounding methods used worldwide and their impact on ignition risk, incipient fault detection and line monitoring systems that are being applied and developed to reduce risks.