Wildfire, AC/DC, and the Shift Toward Harnessing Fire

I’ve been reading Empires of Light, the story of Westinghouse, Tesla, and Edison — the battle between AC and DC power. It’s a story every utility professional knows well: two competing visions of how energy should move through a system.

DC was localized, constrained, and limited by distance. AC was wave‑based, self‑propagating, and capable of traveling across entire regions.

What struck me is how closely this maps to wildfire behavior.

Wildfire isn’t just flame. It’s energy — moving, transferring, amplifying, and seeking the path of least resistance.

And right now, the global fire‑weather system is behaving much more like AC than DC.

DC Energy → Localized Wildfires

A single ignition in a small fuel bed. Powerful locally, but limited unless conditions are perfect. We’re very good at fighting these — the “DC wildfires.”

AC Energy → Fire‑Weather Waves

Energy traveling across basins, across states, across continents. Not because of embers — but because of atmospheric momentum. These are the “AC wildfires,” and they’re outflanking our traditional playbook.

This is why we’re seeing ignition windows open in Greece, Spain, France, the Northwest corridor, and soon Australia. These aren’t isolated events. They’re expressions of the same upper‑air wave touching different fuel beds at different times.

Just like AC, wildfire energy moves in waves, not points.

It amplifies where resistance is low. It accelerates where the atmosphere is aligned. It “steps” across terrain the way AC steps across a grid.

Once you see wildfire as an energy system, everything becomes clearer:

• fuels become stored energy

• wind becomes voltage

• terrain becomes resistance

• convection becomes current

• pressure gradients become frequency

• ignition windows become load

• fire spread becomes transmission

And the atmosphere becomes the grid.

We’re entering a new era where wildfire isn’t just a hazard — it’s an environmental energy system we must understand, anticipate, and eventually manage.

Utilities already think in terms of load, flow, resistance, and energy transfer. Wildfire is simply another energy system — one that’s finally revealing its structure.

We’re very good at fighting DC wildfires. But AC wildfires — the wave‑driven, energy‑propagating kind — require a different approach.

The future of resilience isn’t just about suppression or mitigation. It’s about learning to read — and ultimately harness — the energy systems that shape our environment.

Just like Tesla did.