Casey Kirkpatrick explains how the utility is preparing for larger, more frequent wildfires across the Northeast.
From his early days as a paper boy and eagle scout to his time as a naval officer decades later, Casey Kirkpatrick has always believed in service. Today, after more than 25 years with the energy giant National Grid, he’s still serving.
Casey directs National Grid’s strategic engineering team, where he focuses on an emerging threat that most of its east coast ratepayers don’t think much about: wildfires. To get ahead of that growing risk, National Grid has partnered with Rhizome, a company that helps utilities understand their wildfire vulnerabilities.
This week on With Great Power, Casey tells Brad what National Grid has learned from its work with other utilities and with Rhizome — including a few surprises. They also explore how wildfire preparedness fits into National Grid's broader climate resilience planning, and why the threat looks somewhat different across the utility's UK operations.
Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.
Brad Langley: Growing up in a small town outside Albany, New York, Casey Kirkpatrick was a doer.
Casey Kirkpatrick: I took advantage of every opportunity that was offered. I did every extracurricular in the school, so I did sports, music band, chorus, school plays.
Brad Langley: He was also really drawn to helping out and being of service.
Casey Kirkpatrick: I was active in scouting and eventually got my Eagle Scout. I was an altar server at my church and I was a paperboy.
Brad Langley: Casey dreamed of becoming an aerospace engineer at NASA. But as he got older, he realized getting there would take money he just didn't have.
Casey Kirkpatrick: I really had maybe enough saved up to buy a laptop, but I didn't have much in my college fund.
Brad Langley: So he did what other innovative kids have done. He turned to the military to fund his education. But after struggling to master advanced mathematics at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, he let go of his NASA dreams and pivoted into a career in the Navy.
Casey Kirkpatrick: I served as the officer of the deck on a destroyer in the Persian Gulf during the Global War on Terror. My roles in the Navy included damage control, which was ranging from firefighting and flooding to nuclear chemical biological responses. I served as the anti-submarine warfare officer on the ship for a time, and then the Force Protection Officer, which was an anti-terrorism role.
Brad Langley: The Navy taught him how to shoulder responsibility under stressful conditions. But a year into his marriage, he realized it just wasn't for him.
Casey Kirkpatrick: In my first 12 months of marriage, I was only in port for about two months and the rest of the time was out to sea and it just wasn't the lifestyle I was looking for with my family.
Brad Langley: So he attended a career fair for folks looking to transition out of the military. After learning about an opening for an operations engineer with National Grid, he jumped at it.
Casey Kirkpatrick: I looked for something that I could be proud of, that I could point to my children and say that I'm doing something that has meaning. And I've found that in the energy industry.
Brad Langley: It's been 25 years now since Casey joined National Grid. During that time, he's focused on everything from operations in Massachusetts to solar interconnections in New York. Today he directs the Utilities strategic engineering group where he focuses on a growing threat to utilities across the Northeast: Wildfires.
Newscaster: Firefighter Peter Curdo uses a hose to soak the charred ground of the woods in a residential neighborhood of Braintree, Massachusetts.
Brad Langley: Eastern wildfires are much smaller than those out west, but they've been increasing in size and number. The fall of 2024 actually saw more than 500 wildfires in a single month in Massachusetts.
Newscaster:There's about a 1200% increase over what we normally get. Normally we'd be getting in the range of 20 or 30 fires.
Brad Langley: Casey is leading an effort at National Grid that could help the utility get ahead of this growing threat to find vulnerabilities across their service territories. They've teamed up with a company called Rhizome, which helps utilities identify wildfire risks.
Casey Kirkpatrick: It's been over the past couple of years that wildfires have emerged really as one of the biggest topics in the industry. But geographically, the risk is spreading aggressively.
Brad Langley: This is With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid, today. I'm Brad Langley. Some people say utilities are slow to change, that they don't innovate fast enough. And while it might not always seem like the most cutting edge industry, there are lots of really smart people working really hard to make the grid cleaner, more reliable and customer centric. Today, my guest is Casey Kirkpatrick, director of Group Strategic Engineering at National Grid. We talk about what the utility is learning from its work with Rhizome, how this project fits into its overall risk and resilience planning, and how the threat of wildfires is different in National Grid's UK service territory. But first, I wanted to know what Casey has learned about wildfires from colleagues in other regions.
One thing I love about the utility space is you guys aren't competing for customers. They're in a regulated environment. So it becomes very much a knowledge sharing kind of experience. We can learn from each other. And I am sure you discussed wildfire risks with counterparts at utilities, other parts of the country. What are some of your key learnings from those conversations?
Casey Kirkpatrick: Yeah, so I'm really grateful to the other utilities who have been very transparent about sharing their lessons learned and being really vulnerable about what has worked and what hasn't worked. PG&E in particular, and all the California utilities do an annual conference where they invite other utilities to learn from them. Two examples of things that we've learned are: It's important having situational awareness at a level that allows you to make effective decisions. So the granularity of the situational awareness is really important. And similarly, having an understanding of where on your system your most vulnerable to wildfire risk allows you to make really targeted tactical decisions.
Brad Langley: And as you mentioned, wildfire risk is growing across the US, including the northeast. What do your models show?
Casey Kirkpatrick: So I would say that we're still learning right now. The early returns are that the risk level probably will remain about the same, but it goes into the extreme days where we're really concerned. Where we may not see rain for four to six weeks and all of a sudden there's a threat even in years where there's high precipitation, if it's concentrated in pockets and then there's pockets of drought, the conditions that are conducive to wildfire can change in a very short period of time.
Brad Langley: So let's talk about Rhizome and that partnership. Walk me through how that came about.
Casey Kirkpatrick: So we identified wildfire as an area where we wanted to make sure that we were doing our due diligence, and part of that included doing an asset risk assessment that looked at a few things in particular. So there's a lot of vendors that offer wildfire asset risk assessments. And what we wanted was a geospatial look at our assets, a granular span level assessment of risk, and something that incorporated future climate projections. So Rhizome's Grid Firm offering included all the items we wanted in this asset risk assessment.
Brad Langley: And why is the geospatial piece so important to you all?
Casey Kirkpatrick: It allows us to be more targeted, and some of that plays into the affordability question. We can't rebuild our system every 10 years. We have aging infrastructure, we have competing demands, asset replacement, new customer load. We need to make smart investment decisions. And to do that, we need to understand where are our highest risks so that we can target our mitigations in a way that's affordable for our customers.
Brad Langley: And maybe going a little bit deeper in terms of data and technology, what is Rhizome bringing to the table and what did National Grid bring to the table as part of this partnership?
Casey Kirkpatrick: Sure. So National Grid is providing data on our assets, our outage history, our vegetation management, and our asset inspections. Rhizome has weather and climate data. They have their projections on how the climate will change over time, and then they crunch this and they're able to calculate a risk score and a consequence score down to the span level. And we meet several times a month so we can steer them on our specific concerns. And then they've been very responsive to the steer that we've given them.
Brad Langley: And is this an ongoing process? I know wildfire season tends to be pretty defined during the course of the year when like you mentioned, there's less rain, it's more dry. But what's the level of effort throughout the course of the year? Is it pretty consistent and constant?
Casey Kirkpatrick: No. So we have found that there are seasons where wildfire is a more prominent risk, and that was a little bit surprising. What we found was that the biggest risk is during April may timeframe with a secondary risk in the October November timeframe. So it's really when there's a lot of dead vegetation and the potential for drought. So when we started, I expected the summer to be the period of highest risk. I thought that's when we'd have the hottest days and things would dry out. But we also get a lot of rain over the summer, and also the trees are budded, the vegetation is green, there's not as much dead vegetation there. So we found our peak is in the April may timeframe with a secondary one in the November timeframe.
Brad Langley: And how does this work fit into your larger climate driven risk management planning in terms of threats other than wildfires?
Casey Kirkpatrick: Yeah, we're juggling a lot of needs ranging from aging infrastructure to electrification of more parts of our daily life, like transportation, heat and communications, all under the umbrella of affordability. Ideally, when we roll a truck, we're able to look at the immediate need, but also have an idea of potential future needs such as climate resilience so that we can address current and future needs all at once. In the Northeast, we view wildfire as a lower risk than some of the more prominent risks like wind icing, flooding, and heat waves. But low risk does not equal no risk. So we have an opportunity to learn from the utilities that have been through these events, and we can be proactive in taking those lessons learned that other utilities have experienced and we can apply them to our plans. So one thing I've learned is that we do have wildfires in our territory already, but most times they're very contained, so you don't really hear about them. The concern is that as we experience more severe weather conditions that lead to wildfire propagation, the hot, dry windy days will grow, and we want to be prepared for that.
Brad Langley: In general, are your customers coming around the idea that wildfires are a risk in your service territory? Is it still like that's not our problem, it doesn't happen here very often, and maybe how much customer education or awareness are you having to do to get people thinking about the potential for damage because of wildfires within your customer base?
Casey Kirkpatrick: Yeah, I don't think that it's forefront in their mind. They're seeing things, I'm looking outside my window right now. We got snow yesterday, so that's going to be more prominent on their minds. They're not thinking about wildfires, the types of risks we see. We're seeing heat waves, we see icing related outages. Wind is a very big one in our territory. I don't think it's forefront in their mind. It's more us as a utility trying to be proactive in learning from folks who have really experienced devastating consequences from it. And before we're in that situation, can we be proactive in learning more about the risk?
Brad Langley: You mentioned some of the data showing you how the seasonal trends are becoming clearer, and it's not so much summer, but the spring and fall. Any other data or insights that you can share that were of interest to you that were collected through this geospatial analysis?
Casey Kirkpatrick: A couple things. So it has confirmed our assumptions on our level of risk, and again, it is a lower level risk compared to some of the more prominent things we're experiencing already. We're also finding that the risk is quite concentrated. It was surprising to me that the biggest risk areas that we're seeing are in our suburban areas. So in upstate New York and pockets of Massachusetts, we have state parks, we have large areas of vegetation, which is where I expected to see the biggest risk, where we have the most vegetation, and that's not really the case. We're finding that it's the combination of vegetation and people where the greatest risk is something like 85% of wildfires across the country are ignited by people. So it's there where we're seeing the biggest pockets that we can be potentially vulnerable at.
Brad Langley: And how is this work maybe informing other parts of your job or day-to-day work, any kind of learnings that you're applying to other facets of your job or just kind of emergency preparedness in general?
Casey Kirkpatrick: We had each of our business units develop operating procedures for what we do in the event of a wildfire in our territory. From an asset perspective, we're keeping our eyes open for multi value solutions. So one example, one of the learnings we took from the California utilities is that they're doing early fault detection. If they can prevent a wire from falling or respond to it faster, they can potentially prevent a wildfire ignition or a wildfire propagation. And we were already looking into early fault detection as just a good utility practice, but with the wildfire threat, we found that this is something that can be used in that use case as well. So we think that there's potentially some multi value solutions. A lot of the grid hardening work we're doing already can help us mitigate the wildfire threat.
Brad Langley: Yeah. In addition to detection, I know California's kind of leading the way in undergrounding as well. What's your perspective of undergrounding and has there been any conversations around taking that step from a preventative standpoint?
Casey Kirkpatrick: So undergrounding, traditionally, the knock on that has been the cost of it, and it was another area where PG&E has been transparent about some of the work they're doing. So we're certainly tapped into that and trying to learn from them on how they're reducing the costs of it. It's something that we're open to in targeted situations, but with the affordability question, you'd have to make a very strong case for it. And we're weighing whether there's more affordable solutions that solve our needs in any of these that we look at.
Brad Langley: Yep. As you went down this path of partnering with the Rhizome and more broadly wildfire prevention, was there any doubt within the organization about its value? Did you have to sell the idea into colleagues and the value of the partnership or just to focus on wildfire prevention in the first place? Since it's possible and it's happening, but it's not as bad as it is in other regions, was there any doubt or was everybody all in like, yes, we absolutely have to do this. This is a problem or could be a problem for us going forward?
Casey Kirkpatrick: I think that folks were understanding that we needed to make sure we were doing our due diligence in this space. There was a level of “how do we balance this with the climate and weather hazards that are affecting us day to day right now?” So it was just coming to that balance of looking at what is emerging as a risk and balancing that with current risks.
Brad Langley: And what about your UK operations? Are there specific elements about wildfire risks that are unique or pose greater or different risks in that region?
Casey Kirkpatrick: So actually what we're seeing is geographically, it looks like the level of risk is pretty similar between the Northeast US and the UK. They are pockets where there are noted for precipitation, which helps sometimes Mother Nature's helping us mitigate the wildfire risk. So yeah, it's been pretty consistent, the levels between the US, Northeast, US, and UK.
Brad Langley: What are some of the trends or infrastructure requirements that maybe make wildfires a little bit less risky for National Grid in the UK vis-a-vis the US?
Casey Kirkpatrick: So in the UK, the infrastructure is a little bit different. A big portion of our business in the UK is transmission. And transmission we find is lower risk for wildfires than distribution. Again, not no risk, but it is lower risk on the transmission system. And then we do have a distribution business in the UK as well, but a fair portion of that is underground compared to our US business, which is predominantly overhead at the distribution level. So from an asset perspective, we think that there's potentially a bit lower risk in the UK compared to the assets that we have in the US.
Brad Langley: I got one last question. So you're a listener of the show, so you know what I'm going to ask you. We call the show with great power, which is a nod of the energy industry. It's also a famous Spider-Man quote. With great power comes great responsibility. So Casey, what superpower do you bring to the energy transition?
Casey Kirkpatrick: I would say my optimism. I'm constantly impressed at the talented people we have working at National Grid and the industry as a whole. I really believe that collectively we're capable of everything that we're setting our sights on. I talked about how we're in a period of transition in the industry. We have a lot of ambitious targets, and I really think we can meet all of them. We have really ambitious goals, and I think it's just going to take time and elbow grease to get to where we want to be and really where we need to be as an industry.
Brad Langley: Great. Well, Casey, thank you so much for the time. I really enjoyed talking to you.
Casey Kirkpatrick: Yeah, thanks, Brad. This was really exciting. I appreciate the time you've given me as well.
Brad Langley: Casey Kirkpatrick is the director of group strategic engineering at National Grid with Great Power is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios delivering on our clean energy future is complex. GridX exists to simplify the journey. GridX is the enterprise rate platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future. We design and implement emerging rate structures and we increase consumer investment in clean energy all while managing the complex billing needs of a distributed grid.
Mary Catherine O'Connor produced a show. Anne Bailey is our senior editor. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Sean Marquand composed the original theme song and mixed the show. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and me, Brad Langley.
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