About DON Systems

Physics-first grid intelligence

DON Systems LLC builds software that measures grid entropy from physical conditions and routes power through lowest-risk paths. Our approach is deterministic, auditable, and grounded in mathematical physics — not machine learning.


Mission

Prevent grid-caused wildfires through physics

The problem we solve

California utilities spend over $6 billion annually on wildfire mitigation. Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) de-energize entire regions to prevent fires, affecting millions of customers. Current monitoring systems rely on weather models or machine learning trained on historical fire data — approaches that struggle with novel conditions and produce opaque decisions that regulators cannot audit.

Our approach

Firebreak measures the physical state of every transmission segment in real time. When grid entropy — a mathematically derived measure of segment instability — exceeds the bifurcation boundary, the system routes power through safer paths automatically. The routing decision is deterministic: same physical inputs on the same grid topology produce the same result every time. There is no training data, no neural network, and no stochastic variation. Every decision traces back to specific physical measurements at specific times on specific grid segments.


Intellectual Property

Protected by issued and pending patents

DON Theory and its grid applications are protected by a patent portfolio covering the mathematical framework, entropy calculation methods, and routing algorithms.

Detailed technical briefings on the DON Theory mathematical framework are available under NDA to qualified utility partners, grid operators, and regulatory bodies.


Methodology

Transparent data, reproducible results

Every number on this website comes from either a backtest output or a cited public source. The backtest methodology is designed for independent reproduction.

Data sources

Grid Topology
California Energy Commission (CEC) GIS public transmission line dataset. 6,839 features covering PG&E territory. Three regional topologies: Butte County (104 nodes), Shasta County (33 nodes), Sonoma County (261 nodes), plus Lake, Napa, Yuba, Mendocino, and Calaveras counties.
Weather
ERA5 reanalysis hourly data via Open-Meteo Archive API. Fetched at each node's geographic coordinates. Variables: wind speed, temperature, relative humidity. 31km grid resolution.
Load
CAISO historical system load data, scaled to local grid capacity per topology. Hourly resolution matching weather data.
Fire Records
Cal Fire incident reports and investigation findings. CPUC proceeding records. 14 fires spanning 2008–2021, all in PG&E territory.

Backtest methodology

Each fire was backtested independently on the CEC transmission topology for the fire's county. ERA5 weather was fetched at every node's geographic coordinates for the fire date. The system ran 24 hourly cycles with no prior knowledge of fire occurrence or location. Detection is defined as any hour where network entropy exceeds the bifurcation boundary (θc = 0.42).

False positive analysis used 100 randomly selected non-fire dates from fire season (June–October, 2015 and 2017) across all three primary topologies, yielding 300 topology-day analyses. With the unified detection gate (DON maturity + sustained hours ≥5), 0 of 300 analyses triggered false alerts (0.0%).

Financial figures

All financial data is sourced from public regulatory filings. PG&E wildfire claim settlements ($25.5B) from SEC filings during 2019 bankruptcy proceedings. Annual mitigation spending ($6.17B) from PG&E's 2024 Wildfire Mitigation Plan filing. Consumer impact estimates are derived from these filings with methodology available on request.


Trust

What we claim — and what we don't

We claim

The system detected dangerous grid conditions in 13 of 14 historical wildfires — covering 140 of 140 deaths — with zero false positives across 300 non-fire days. The decisions are deterministic and fully auditable. The approach requires no new hardware.

We don't claim

The system does not predict fires. It measures grid entropy and routes power through safer paths. The unified gate achieved zero false positives across 300 non-fire topology-days. The single miss — Jerusalem Fire — caused zero deaths and zero structure loss. The system is an intelligence layer, not an autonomous controller.


Ready to learn more?

We provide detailed technical briefings under NDA for utility engineering teams, grid operators, and regulatory staff. The briefing covers the mathematical framework, validation methodology, and deployment architecture.

Contact Us
DON Systems LLC  |  partnership@donsystems.com