The following is a transcript of the July 13, 2026, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at PublicPower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now. I’m Paul Ciampoli, APPA's News Director.
Our guest on this episode is Barry Johnson, Fire Mitigation Specialist at Arizona Public Power Utility Salt River Project.
Barry is here to discuss SRP's recent announcement that is working with Northern Arizona University to install new wireless moisture sensors designed by a company called Growvera to improve how wildfire risk is monitored in the Tonto National Forest in Arizona.
This pilot project is testing new technology from Growvera that enables continuous, real-time tracking of forest fuel and soil moisture conditions.
The project will be funded by SRP's Innovation and Development Program, and SRP noted that this is the first utility installation of this technology in the country.
Barry, thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Barry, in terms of the first topic and question, in announcing this project, as you know, SRP noted that fuel moisture is one of the most important indicators of wildfire danger.
But today it's typically measured through manual field sampling, which is infrequent and labor intensive.
So against that backdrop, how much of a potential game changer is this new technology for SRP in terms of the utility being able to proactively address wildfire risks?
Barry Johnson
That's a great question.
Live and dead fuel moisture as well as soil moisture is very important when it comes to wildfire predictive services. We call them indices.
And there's a lot of different variables and formulas that go into this, but those are definitely one of the top tier.
The forest and the federal agencies and state partners all do a great job of sampling a wide variety of vegetation and to get to those indices.
But what Growvera wants to provide and SRP is happy to sponsor is just more frequent intervals. So instead of two or four times a month in a 30 day time frame, they can get readings every hour and they're able to change that variable too.
So if you want every two hours, every six hours, they can change those settings. So if you can imagine, instead of getting numbers, go into data twice a month versus every hour, it's just that much more fine-tuned.
Paul Ciampoli
And could you provide additional details with respect to how the wireless moisture sensors work?
Barry Johnson
Growvera has done a great job. When we first started talking to them a little bit over a year ago, they brought the first sensor forward and it was orange in color.
And they just continued to develop and make the technology better. I believe when we installed our final three sites two weeks ago with them, I think they're on their fifth or their sixth aeration of that.
So they keep continuing to improve their technology and their development. And so what happens is we go in and install what's called a gateway and that device sits on a weather station that they also provide and that gateway talks to all these sensors that we pluck onto live branches that are on trees, as well as dead branches and limbs that are on the ground.
Brian, the CEO, said about a half mile range if that unit is kind of on the hilltop. We obviously didn't test those parameters because we didn't really need to, but it was nice to do a little bit wider of an area.
Paul Ciampoli
One follow-up question occurred to me, not necessarily related to what I just asked you about, but so with respect to the Tonto National Forest, was there a specific reason why that was chosen in terms of this project?
Barry Johnson
All of our forests in Region 3 and in Arizona are great cooperators of ours for sure.
The Tonto National Forest footprint just happens to be a high percentage of what SRP's watershed and utility footprint looks like.
And we definitely have, you know, a lot of partners that work on the Coconino National Forest...San Carlos Tribe, but Tonto is just kind of the more bigger representation.
In the future, we plan on partnering with other forests if this pilot project goes through and shows it's successful and the data is equivalent to, you know, doing a fuel moisture sampling, the old way of going out and cutting the limbs and cutting the leaves and then having to cook them in an oven back at the office and then do some formulas.
And then the soil moisture -- it's kind of a new nuance in the wildfire arena. Not new, but it's getting a lot more attention as of lately.
A lot of the meetings I've been in and collaborations I've done with Northern Arizona University -- Sally Diamond is a professor I work close with, is in the soil business and studies.
And it's starting to get a lot more steam and traction within the community, as far as being able to be a good indice predictor for wildfire spread.
Paul Ciampoli
I'm not familiar with Growvera, so could you provide additional details on the company and how did SRP choose to work with the company on this project?
Barry Johnson
At SRP, we get a lot of innovation projects that kind of come our way.
We're very good about working with the Arizona universities and getting them engaged on appropriate projects to help assist us with testing and verifying and making sure that some of the advancements we're trying to make are accurate and so Growvera came to us and had a nice presentation about these clamps that they could put onto vegetation, both alive and dead, and measure the fuel moisture of them.
And that's a very important indice when it comes to wildfire prediction.
There's a lot of models out there and indices and things that are looked at, like energy release components, burning index...and that's what gives you, at the end of the day, your fire danger rating system, which when you're driving along the highway and you see the Smokey the Bear sign and it says it's an extreme, that's how they get to that answer is from all these indices.
And so right now, the federal agencies and state agencies, they go out and sample as frequent as they can.
It is a little labor intensive because you usually have to drive out into the forest and clip leaves and go back and then cook them in an oven and measure them before and after and then enter that into a spreadsheet.
And so Growvera, it was very impressive because these clamps and the technology -- they say they can give us readings every hour if you want them. And that's what we chose to do with our six pilot sites that we deployed on the Tonto National Forest.
And then when they first started we've been working with them for a little over a year now we're collaborating -- the clamps were orange and i think they're on their sixth clamp that they've adjusted and their technology seems to be working really well. The website is very clean -- you get weather station data, soil moisture data.
We did four different depths of soil moisture at each of these sites -- we did three different holes. So, yeah, everything comes to a dashboard and is right there at your fingertips and you can have more regular readings. This assists us on the watershed.
When there's fires going on, how severe does it burn? How much flooding are we going to have or runoff? How can we prepare for soot in our dams from some of these fires? The technology is very exciting.
Paul Ciampoli
The technology that Growvera is using – would this work in the Pacific Northwest or California? It's not limited just to your part of the country, I'm taking it?
Barry Johnson
Paul, that's correct. It is not limited. They can go all over the country and even all over the world. The advancements they're making on the latest clamp that they're using is going to be able to talk to satellites and will no longer need cell phone service.
So forests in Australia can buy some of these and deploy them and get their live and dead fuel moistures every hour on the hour.
Paul Ciampoli
You mentioned Northern Arizona University - so can you elaborate on what role the university is going to play in the project?
Barry Johnson
Sally Diamond with Northern Arizona University is the lead that's working very closely with us and their role in the project is to verify that the clamps are accurate in comparison to what the U.S. Forest Service is coming up with numbers wise -- say, on June 15th, the forest gets 25% in Manzanita, which is extremely low. And the clamps are around 24, 25, 26, and it's proof of concept. That's why it's a pilot project.
We have a one-year agreement with Growvera, but I can tell you so far working with them officially since we've got everything out and deployed for just a few months, it's very impressive.
The website is very impressive. You can export data if you want. You can change how frequently you throw the intervals in, which is very important for fire modeling.
As a prior operations chief on a type one team here in region three, you lean on modeling a lot. You have individuals that are in your plan shop that are feeding a database with temperature and all the humidity, live and dead fuel moistures, wind, vegetation types and it's giving you an output of a prediction of what your fire is going to do in the next 24, 36 or 48 hours and it's another tool in the toolbox.
It's not like every individual goes out on the ground and says all right this is what the fire is going to do and it does exactly that but it's nice to know what possibilities you have or what options that you can make based on those because you don't want to invest you know multiple days of hard work and labor from these men and women on crews and engines and different resources out there and then not be able to implement that plan so it's pretty exciting.
It all talks together in some form or another it's just how frequent you can get it to talk can help you possibly be more successful on the ground.
Paul Ciampoli
If the pilot project proves to be successful, what would be the potential next steps for the utility as it relates to possible deployment of the new technology?
Barry Johnson
We're already kind of talking about that currently. We are definitely going to buy more kits from them.
And we want to start focusing in different areas of our footprint. We want to be all over our watershed, you know, near our PSPS circuits and make sure that we're getting the most accurate and recent data that we can around the Salt River footprint.
And we're happy to work with our local tribes and forests and agencies and cooperators to assist them with this data and we want to share it and so does the company.
Brian the CEO is very adamant about wanting this data to be out to people that are just interested in it.
Paul Ciampoli
So what other tools are being utilized by SRP as it relates to mitigating wildfire risks?
Barry Johnson
It's another great question. We have AI detection cameras that we have posted around some areas of our footprint that are similar to ones that other companies are using to try to detect smoke when it pops up.
They're very impressive. I would say great coordination and cooperation with our local agencies, DFFM [Department of Forestry and Fire Management] and all the forests we work around and tribes -- everybody is very great about communicating to specifically the wildfire mitigation group at SRP and the other utilities in the state.
We collaborate with APS very frequently. I was talking to them this morning about a fire that was here in Miami, Arizona. So, yeah, it's very exciting.
Paul Ciampoli
And so the reference to the AI cameras, I apologize if you mentioned that, but how long have those been in use?
Barry Johnson
The AI cameras SRP has have been in use for approximately four years and we're advancing in that -- we are working right now to deploy five more and we have budgeted plans for the next five years to continue to add more to those.
Paul Ciampoli
You mentioned APS and working with them that's an investor-owned utility, correct?
Barry Johnson
That's correct.
Paul Ciampoli
This sounds like it's another great example of how public power and whether it's cooperatives or investor-owned utilities, that collaboration can prove to be very beneficial.
Barry Johnson
Very beneficial. It does make you more successful. I will say that.
And our partners at other utility companies around the state have been excellent to work with and collaborate with. We meet frequently and bouncing ideas off of each other. And of course, there's some things that we're going to do different and everybody does.
But it's just nice to have those solid relationships in place to be able to collaborate and talk options.
And we're also in different parts of the state and our groups live in different areas of the state and so it's nice to be able to just feed information to each other.
The wildfire game is a lot of input. You want a lot of communication and you want real-time information.
And so when you have positive relationships like that, it's...very easy to reach across the pond and ask for any information or any help or see if they know a little bit more about the fire than you do.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks again for taking the time today. This has really been proven very educational for me and I didn't really know a lot about this specifically as it relates to wildfire mitigation efforts and so I know that this will help out with a lot of our listeners who will be listening to this episode of things that they can take away from this episode.
Barry Johnson
Thank you, Paul, for having me on. It was a pleasure.
