New Home Safety Tech for Consumers Can Help Utilities Stop Wildfires Before They Start

GERMANTOWN, Md., May 27, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Whisker Labs' Ting, the winner of the 2021 Best of the Smart Home Awards - Best Use of Machine Learning Category, helps homeowners maintain a proactive stance against the most devastating category of home fires. Designed to detect and alert on the tiniest sparking in home wiring and devices before an electrical fire can start, it turns out that these sensors are also excellent detectors of potential electrical hazards on the power grid.

While keeping homeowners safe across the country - especially in wildfire-prone states such as California, Texas, and Arizona - Ting is already detecting faulty transformers, loose utility wires, failing insulators, grid arcing events, and other potentially dangerous utility conditions that can knock out power or spark wildfires. Areas with Ting-protected homes reveal hundreds of grid events each day. "We are detecting grid faults in very early, or incipient, stages, providing time for utility crews to take proactive steps to prevent possible wildfire ignitions," says Bob Marshall, CEO, and Founder of Whisker Labs.

Whisker Labs has found that utilities are often unaware of these dangerous conditions and are developing a growing number of utility partnerships in the U.S. to share actionable grid-event data. With this information, utilities can more quickly detect potentially hazardous situations and better protect communities and consumers while avoiding property damage.

"No one could have imagined a few years ago that a grid-independent, community-based home technology would be a solution to high-end grid monitoring," added Marshall. "We're excited that this simple yet exceptionally smart home service can simultaneously serve utility operators and the community."

ABOUT WHISKER LABS

At Whisker Labs, our passion lies in creating smarter solutions to hard problems. Better electrical fire prevention is one of them. Ting unlocks incredible insights into electrical anomalies in very fine detail, in real-time, from a single intelligent sensor. Ting is DIY and plugs into any outlet, and takes 2 minutes to install. While on the lookout for electrical fire hazards within a home, Ting also monitors the quality of power delivered by electric utilities, identifying utility grid faults that can induce fires, damage appliances, and create electrocution risks inside the home. These same faults can also serve as an ignition source for devastating wildfires, similar to those occurring in central and western states. Ting's unprecedented track record leads a new wave of safety technology with broad appeal and numerous prospective applications.

Media Contact

Joe McNulty, Whisker Labs, Inc., +1 (301) 250-4041, [email protected]

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SOURCE Whisker Labs, Inc.