This Software Can Predict Exactly Where the Power Grid Will Fail—So Operators Can Prevent It
You could argue that reliable electricity has never mattered more. Data centers powering AI are multiplying. Electric vehicles are spreading. Yet the grid carrying all this load was largely built decades ago, and it keeps failing under weather that old standards say it should survive. In late January, ice storms across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee left hundreds of thousands of people and businesses without power. In Mississippi alone, the storm downed some 1.5 million feet of wires—that’s more than 280 miles—damaged nearly 1,400 poles, 320 transformers and 800 transmission tower cross arms, according to Entergy. The pattern of destruction and recovery is familiar: ice accumulates, wind blows, poles and wires snap, crews replace them—often with the same size poles and components that just failed. But the technology to break this cycle already exists. Advanced software can model every pole, crossarm, and wire on the grid, simulate any windstorm and ice cover, and show exactly which structures will fail. Add AI and connected data to the mix, including massive amounts of information captured by drones, and the bottleneck—modeling what’s already out there—is finally starting to crack. Entrepreneur Otto Lynch is the expert on this topic. He has spent two decades on