Proactive Wildfire Mitigation and Grid Resilience – Aligns with the 2025 Executive Order

Aligning Federal Policy with Predictive Technologies

Executive Summary

The President’s 2025 Executive Order on Wildfire Prevention and Response represents a pivotal federal shift toward proactive wildfire mitigation, emphasizing data-driven technologies, vegetation management along transmission corridors, and grid resilience.  IND Technology’s Early Fault Detection (EFD™) system – a proven predictive maintenance solution recognized by EPRI in 2023 – aligns perfectly with these directives.  Together, federal policy and advanced analytics create a synergistic path to reduce wildfire risk, strengthen electric grid reliability, and enable scalable grid expansion.

The Federal Policy Context: Executive Order Overview

On June 12, 2025, the president issued the “Empowering Commonsense Wildfire Prevention and Response” executive order.  It calls for:

• Unified wildland fire programs under the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture
• A national technology roadmap for predictive wildfire tools, including AI, data sharing, and ignition detection
• Streamlined regulatory approval for grid-adjacent vegetation management, prescribed burns, & biomass removal
• Updated rules from FERC, DOE, and EPA to enhance wildfire resilience in electric utilities
• Declassification of relevant satellite imagery and deployment of federal assets to support fire detection & response

This policy marks a comprehensive push to incorporate cutting-edge technology in mitigating the escalating threat of wildfires.

Predictive Maintenance in Action: The Role of EFD™

Early Fault Detection (EFD™) developed by IND Technology, is a predictive condition monitoring system designed to detect electrical network anomalies – incipient faults – before they escalate into system failures or catastrophic wildfires.  Unlike traditional fault location tools that react after a failure has occurred, EFD™ continuously monitors the network in real time, using radio frequency (RF) emissions and advanced cloud-based analytics to identify degradation and emerging risks.

EFD™ can proactively detect a wide range of fault precursors, including vegetation encroachment within 24 inches of energized conductors, damaged or tracking insulators, broken or frayed conductor strands (particularly in multi-strand configurations), tracking across wooden crossarms, internal defects within equipment that cannot be found by visual inspection, loose or deteriorating clamps and connectors, partial discharges, and arcing events.  By identifying these conditions early – often months before a visible failure – the system gives utilities the opportunity to intervene with targeted maintenance before equipment fails or a fire is ignited.

The EFD™ system has been deployed across multiple U.S. utilities and in five other countries, where it continues to support proactive asset management strategies.  Its ability to uncover latent defects not visible through visual inspection or traditional monitoring makes it a critical tool for reducing outage risks, improving public safety, and enhancing overall grid resilience.  As an example, in one such deployment on a 112-mile circuit, the EFD™ system successfully identified the following over a two-year period:

• Failing conductor coverings (insulation) contacting vegetation
• Damaged insulators causing crossarm tracking
• Cracked spacer cables and broken conductor strands
• Vegetation encroachment and improperly installed connectors

These issues, had they not been proactively addressed, could have resulted in power outages or fire hazards.

Federal Goals, Technological Solutions: A Strategic Alignment

The president’s executive order seeks to overhaul wildfire response by integrating proactive technologies – an objective that EFD™ fulfils in multiple ways:

Shifting the Maintenance Paradigm: A National Imperative

The transition from reactive to proactive maintenance is no longer optional – it is essential.  With more than 70% of the U.S. electric grid infrastructure over 25 years old, and electrification demands expected to double generation capacity by 2050, utilities must modernize their approach to asset management.  Predictive solutions like EFD™ are key enablers of this shift, offering measurable and immediate benefits:

• Improved Public Safety: EFD™ detects high-risk conditions – such as vegetation encroachment, damaged insulators, or loose hardware – before they escalate into ignition events or safety hazards.
• Operational Efficiency: Maintenance crews are guided by data-driven alerts, allowing them to prioritize and address issues based on actual system conditions rather than relying on time-based or visual inspections alone.
• Cost Reductions: Planned and scheduled repairs enabled by predictive analytics are up to nine times less expensive than emergency or reactive repairs, leading to significant long-term savings.
• Grid Expansion Enablement: As utilities build out infrastructure to meet growing energy demand, predictive maintenance ensures system reliability keeps pace – preventing asset degradation from becoming a bottleneck in grid modernization.

The EFD™ proactive detection technology allows utilities to detect and respond to emerging faults before they cause outages, enabling smarter planning, greater resilience, and a safer energy future.

Forward – Toward a Resilient Future

The president’s executive order lays the foundation for a national approach to wildfire mitigation that prioritizes technological innovation.  IND Technology’s EFD™ system is already delivering on that vision, offering utilities a continuous threat-barrier framework that safeguards customers, protects infrastructure, and enables the grid of tomorrow.

To fully capitalize on this alignment, utilities and regulators must now act decisively – leveraging federal momentum to accelerate deployment of predictive maintenance technologies across the nation.

About the author

James (Jim) Haw is a seasoned electrical engineer with over 37 years of diverse experience spanning the paper, plastics, electrical utility, and oil & gas industries.  He currently serves as Director of Business Development for North America at IND Technology, where he leads outreach efforts to raise awareness and adoption of the company’s award-winning Early Fault Detection (EFD™) system within U.S. power transmission and distribution utilities.

Jim is widely recognized for his career in automation and reliability, as well as for pioneering the concept of the “born digital” industrial facility.  This visionary approach has been featured in multiple industry publications and earned him the 2023 Excellence in Technical Achievement Award from the International Society of Automation (ISA) for its application to a breakthrough plastics recycling facility.

Jim holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in Texas. He also holds certifications as a Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional (CMRP). A longtime contributor to ISA, Jim has served the organization at the local, regional, and national levels, consistently working to advance the profession and mentor the next generation of engineering leaders.