Xcel Energy, a U.S. utility company operating in Texas and other states, acknowledged this week that its power lines “appeared to have been involved in an ignition of the Smokehouse Creek fire,” according to The Washington Post. The Smokehouse Creek fire is now Texas’ largest wildfire in history, growing to more than 1 million acres.
If you’re looking for more context on this matter, please consider Payman Dehghanian, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the George Washington University. Dehghanian conducts research on electric power systems engineering.
Dehghanian is working on a multi-institutional effort is underway that aims to design and implement new ways of better predicting, mitigating and responding to wildfires in Alaska. Called the FIREWALL Project, the research project is part of a four-year multidisciplinary national effort to improve wildfire resiliency in Alaska and to create resources that can be applied in other parts of the world and for other types of natural disasters. Among the entire team’s efforts, Dehghanian is focusing on the role the electrical grid in Alaska plays on wildfire resiliency. Prof. Dehghanian can speak to their research efforts underway in addressing wildfire resiliency in Alaska as well as other matters related to wildfire prevention, mitigation and response.
Dehghanian also recently published a paper that can help prevent electrically-induced wildfires and mitigate the power outage consequences.
To set up an interview, please contact GW Senior Media Relations Specialist Cate Douglass at cdouglass
gwu [dot] edu (cdouglass[at]gwu[dot]edu).
-GW-
