NORTHERN NEW MEXICO
Kit Carson Electric Co-op puts AI, drone tech to use to mitigate wildfire danger ahead of dicey spring season
Utility CEO says microgrid project also a go as state fills funding gap left by Department of Energy cancellations
TAOS — Kit Carson Electric Cooperative is turning to cutting-edge technologies to better assess and respond to wildfire as New Mexico heads into another bone-dry spring season, where experts are forecasting a heightened risk for catastrophic conflagrations.
The cooperative is one of three utilities participating in a pilot program for AI-based wildfire software created by Firescape, an Albuquerque company that two former Sandia National Labs scientists founded with the goal to use machine learning to map wildfire risk across vast landscapes.
“We’re using machine learning techniques to create a model that can go from a single point of data to a wall-to-wall map for a whole area,” said Holly Eagleston, Firescape’s co-founder and CEO.
To create the maps, Eagleston said the company is harvesting data from satellites and weather stations to assess key factors like wind speed and relative humidity. The company then provides those models to public utilities, which can then pinpoint priority locations for long-term fire mitigation projects, like tree trimming and microgrids that can be powered off for portions of service areas impacted by extreme weather events.
“It's updated every hour, so it's basically minimizing the impact to communities around outages because of this mitigation, but also balancing safety with reliability,” Eagleston said. “So they're doing it when they need to, because fire danger conditions are bad, but it's also very granular and surgical.”
She said the company has applied for a state grant to extend Firescape’s current six-month contract with Kit Carson Electric for three years.
Kit Carson serves three counties: Rio Arriba, Colfax and Taos. The area is home to two of the state’s highest-risk firesheds, or areas most prone to severe wildfire, according to the 2022 Community Wildfire Protection Plan: Taos Canyon and Taos Ski Valley.
Luis Reyes, co-op CEO, says the utility partners with Carson National Forest to update a “three-tier” ratings system to determine priority areas for tree trimming projects, including Taos Canyon, Tres Ritos, Twining Road in Taos Ski Valley and Upper Red River.
“Those are the areas that we deem are the most at risk because they're dry and have a lot of diseased trees,” Reyes said. “We're going to refocus on those.”
Alongside Firescape’s machine-learning tools, Reyes said the co-op has also contracted with drone company Voltair to conduct aerial inspections of its service area to identify dead, diseased and downed trees that can cause natural wildfires to mushroom into catastrophic ones.
Kit Carson is also advancing several community microgrid projects this year to introduce smaller-scale power systems to high-risk areas, such as those that pose risks to power lines in the case of high-wind events that could topple poles and spark wildfires.
“Microgrids are really a public safety tool,” Reyes said, adding that these localized systems come equipped with battery stations to maintain power to residents with the need to power life-sustaining devices, such as oxygen or dialysis machines.
The utility’s green hydrogen clean energy project, set for siting in Questa, Taos and Picuris Pueblo, can be thought of as “big microgrids,” Reyes explained.
New Mexico helped Kit Carson reestablish its financial footing for the initiative this year after the U.S. Department of Energy canceled roughly $15.4 million in funding for the project under the Trump administration in 2025.
In light of record-low snowpack this winter, the National Interagency Fire Center is projecting elevated wildfire risk as New Mexico heads into spring next week; the National Weather Service is forecasting red flag warnings into Sunday, with winds that could gust as high as 40 mph.
Kit Carson issued its own warning Friday afternoon in light of the weekend weather forecast, warning of “increasing wildfire risk across northern New Mexico this weekend.”
In an era of dry, warm weather patterns and ongoing drought, he said new technologies can’t be ignored in the much larger effort to mitigate the risk of catastrophic fire.
“I think now with technology and with drones, we now can identify more accurately where we think there may be problems, to address them,” he said. “And overall, wildfire will be our number-one priority for the rest of the year.”
John Miller is the Albuquerque Journal’s northern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at jmiller@abqjournal.com.
