The company that monitors electrical activity says there are faults all the time Los Angeles The power grid has surged in the same areas where three major wildfires broke out this week.
Whisker Labs CEO Bob Marshall told Fox News Digital that the company recorded sharp increases in outages in the hours leading up to the Eaton, Palisades and Hearst Fires.
Marshall said his company has a network of about 14,000 sensors known as “ting” sensors throughout Los Angeles that can identify and pinpoint faults caused by electrical arcs. Through its network of sensors in homes, Whisker Labs can monitor the electric utility grid with “extraordinary precision and precision.”
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Power lines hang on broken utility poles in the middle of the street caused by the Palisades Fire on January 8, 2025 in the Pacific Palisades community in Los Angeles, California. Outages along Los Angeles' power grid spiked in the same areas where three major wildfires broke out this week, a company that monitors electrical activity said. (J.L. Clendenin/Getty Images)
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“Faults occur as a result of tree limbs coming into contact with wires or wires blowing in the wind and touching. “It creates a spark in error, and we discover all those things,” Marshall explained.
Other causes include faulty electrical equipment ignition, sudden increase in demand or earthquakes. At the time the fires were burning, strong Santa Ana winds were blowing through Los Angeles.
The company's data, shared with Fox News Digital, is startling.
Marshall said that in the Palisades area, which is the largest fire currently raging, there were 63 faults in the two or three hours before the fire ignited. 18 errors were recorded in the hour that began on Tuesday.
The fire has so far burned 12,300 homes and buildings across the region. Throughout the county, The death toll rose to 11 people The authorities expect this number to rise.
“In the case of the Eaton fire near Altadena, there were 317 network faults that occurred in the hours before the fire started,” Marshall said. “Then in the Hearst fire, there were about 230 faults that occurred and we measured them on the sensor network.”
He said on a normal day there are very few mistakes.
Bob Marshall, CEO and co-founder of Whisker Labs, holds a “ting” sensor. (Fox News Digital)
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Sparks from the crevasses can fall to the ground and ignite plants, essentially matching the landscape. Then strong winds carry the flames at high speeds.
Investigators have not yet determined what led to this Raging forest fires That destroyed large swaths of Los Angeles, but the jump in power grid failures may serve as vital clues.
“More importantly, what we can't say is whether one of those defects caused the fire. We don't know that,” Marshall said. “What we know from our data is that there are increased network faults in the area around where these fires are burning.”
He said the data shows that power was not cut off immediately when faults were on the rise.
“But again, we can't say absolutely conclusively whether one of these errors could have caused a fire. I want to be very clear about that,” he added.
Whisker Labs has had discussions with utility companies about using its data, but currently, the data is not being shared, Marshall said.
Currently, ting sensors notify homeowners of power surges so they can take preventive measures to prevent house fires. Marshall said the company has a network of about 1 million sensors across the United States
“A power surge can damage appliances and appliances. In the worst cases, it can cause a house fire,” Marshall said.
He said the “smart and highly advanced” technology could prevent 80% of potential house fires.
A house caught fire during the Eaton Fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles County, California, on January 8, 2025. (Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)
When the sensor picks up a fault, the home sensor is notified via an app, after which they can arrange for an electrician to be called and make the necessary repairs.
“We make 30 million electrical measurements every second Artificial Intelligence (AI) “In the sensor, (we) stream the data to a cloud specifically designed to detect electrical faults inside homes,” he continued. “Then the sensor network detects faults on the network because when there is a fault in the network, it is measured simultaneously by many sensors in the community. So, if there is a fault in your home, that fault does not spread to the entire community, we detect it.” Just on one sensor in your home.
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Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power did not proactively turn off power to mitigate fire risks ahead of this week's devastating wildfires. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing regulatory filings.
The newspaper reported that this precaution is in place with all other major energy companies in California after the utilities sparked wildfires in the past.
A LADWP spokesperson told the magazine they have other safety precautions in place, such as disabling technology that automatically restores power after an outage. She added that widespread preventive power outages could also harm emergency services.
Fox News' Bree Stimson contributed to this report.
