Canada’s Wildfire Season Is Becoming a Transmission Problem, Not Just an Air Quality Problem
When a wildfire burns near a transmission corridor, physical damage is the obvious risk. The less visible risk is what smoke and ash contamination do to high-voltage infrastructure across a much wider area. In Alberta and British Columbia, that contamination risk now extends the effective disruption window well beyond what fire proximity maps show
Canada’s 2023 wildfire season burned over 18.5 million hectares, an area larger than the combined landmass of all Atlantic provinces. The infrastructure consequences of that season, and the 2024 and 2025 seasons that followed, have been studied closely at the equipment level. What is getting less attention in operational planning conversations is the mechanism by which wildfire activity degrades grid performance without a single tower being touched.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.