Johnson-based Vermont Electric Cooperative will be the first utility in the country to use a new tool that predicts grid vulnerability using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The software program, called gridCAVA, was developed by the Washington, D.C.-based tech firm Rhizome.

It will analyze data about power outages, weather patterns, past climate conditions and predictions about the future climate to help the utility prioritize places where the grid is poised to fail.

Larger, investor-owned utilities often leverage similar technology, but it can be difficult for municipal or ratepayer-owned companies to afford.

It’s a dynamic Rhizome CEO and founder Mishal Thadani says could hamper the ability of small utility customers to adopt lower carbon technology, like cold climate heat pumps and hot water heaters. That’s because if consumers can’t expect reliable power, they’re more likely to be hesitant to electrify their home appliances.

“What we specifically wanted to do is build an off-the-shelf product that can also be leveraged by smaller utilities, like municipal utilities and co-ops,” Thadani said.

Vermont Electric Coop serves roughly 33,000 customers in 75 towns in Northern Vermont, and owns roughly 2,500 miles of legacy and primarily off-road distribution lines.

“We’re very resource-constrained as a small cooperative,” said Cyril Brunner, who leads innovation and technologyfor Vermont Electric Coop.

Over the last five years, VEC has seen a rapid increase in power outages, mostly due to wind and ice.

“We have a big area of challenge, and only so much investment to make,” Brunner said. “We really want to prioritize where we’re spending those dollars most effectively.”

Climate change is bringing more intense storms to Vermont, and with them come more power outages.

Electrifying home heat and transportation is so far Vermont’s biggest strategy for cutting greenhouse gas emissions locally, and experts agree that reliable power will be critical if the state succeeds.

April McCullum

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Vermont Public

However, in many places, Vermont’s grid is aged or constrained, and utilities have to prioritize the places where they invest ratepayer money to make costly upgrades.

Brunner hopes gridCAVA will help the utility determine in real time which power outages happened because of a weather event made worse by climate change, and which ones were caused by a one-off storm.

This kind of data, he says, is critical to helping the utility decide where to upgrade its power lines and equipment, because the former could spell more frequent outages in the future.

“We might relocate that line underground. We might move it to the road. We might have a different vegetation management strategy. We might make other investments, potentially … encourage battery storage, other types of resiliency strategies that might exist,” Brunner said.

Brunner says the funding for this new software will come from a fraction of the utility’s $1.5 million technology budget, which is ultimately funded by ratepayers. However, he says the move will have a negligible impact on rates.

Meanwhile, he says VEC saw multiple storms last year alone that caused damage amounting to $1.5 million.

Rhizome has worked in the past with VELCO, Vermont’s grid operator.

Brunner says this will be the most thorough analysis VEC has done to date to identify which parts of its distribution grid are most vulnerable to climate change and in need of upgrades.