SafeBuild: Risk-Based Analysis of Overhead Electric Distribution Facilities

California has experienced increasingly adverse effects from the failure of overhead electric infrastructure. In 2011, in the San Gabriel Valley, 248 utility poles broke, causing an outage to 440,000 customers for up to a week. In 2018, a component on a transmission tower broke, igniting the Camp Fire, which destroyed 18,804 buildings and killed 85 civilians. The cause of these incidents can be ascribed, in part, to deficient methods in accurately capturing the probability that a given pole, conductor, or other component can withstand windy conditions without breaking. Existing software and methodology do not account for material strength variability or even calculate a possibility of failure based on known local wind speeds. The current research believes that it can correct these shortcomings by introducing a program - SafeBuild - that provides the probability that a structure can withstand any given wind gust. SafeBuild calculates the stress on poles and conductors using large deflection finite element analysis. SafeBuild calculates the probability of failure of any component using z-scores based on material median strengths and coefficients of variation. The research successfully created a program that is user-friendly and accurate. SafeBuild fits into the bigger picture of utility safety and wildfire prevention by allowing users to design poles to withstand a wind gust to any desired confidence level.