How to mitigate risk and ensure reliability
BY SARA SANKOWICH, Unitil
For most North American electric utilities, vegetation management (VM) is a critical part of system maintenance. Utilities strive to maintain normal conditions and ensure the system can withstand normal weather events. Even on a fair day, a broken limb or downed tree can cause an outage. By implementing a successful vegetation management program, utilities can help ensure reliability and mitigate risk.
One successful...
Florida Power & Light takes steps to keep lights on Managing vegetation (that is, trees, bushes and other neighboring plants) around power lines is a top priority for electric utilities. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), unmanaged vegetation can cause electricity...
Using LiDAR technologies to enhance operations BY PHILIP CHARLTON, Utility Arborist Association In March 2014, utility vegetation managers from throughout North America gathered in Fort Worth, Texas to share their experience with the use of LiDAR (light detection and ranging) remote sensing...
How to adopt best practices to improve reliability and reduce costs BY PHILIP CHARLTON, Utility Arborist Association Electric utilities have always faced the challenge of determining the optimum frequency of maintenance operations for the control of trees and brush growing near the electric system....
Improve grid reliability today. BY SARA SANKOWICH, Unitil In 2011, the New England region faced two significant weather events: Hurricane Irene and an unseasonably early October snowstorm—on top of other frequent major storm events in the preceding four years. Utilities could not avoid the...
As a utility, vegetation management is of the utmost importance – for ensuring transmission and distribution reliability and complying with complex North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) regulations for minimum vegetation clearance distance and facility...
Electric utilities commonly use trained foresters, traversing thousands of miles, to manually identify vegetation or other geographic hazards posing risks to transmission infrastructure. For one utility in the Western United States, the challenging terrain and accuracy limitations of laser range...
How to adopt best practices to improve reliability and reduce costs BY PHILIP CHARLTON, Utility Arborist Association Electric utilities have always faced the challenge of determining the optimum frequency of maintenance operations for the control of trees and brush growing near the electric system....
Using LiDAR technologies to enhance operations BY PHILIP CHARLTON, Utility Arborist Association In March 2014, utility vegetation managers from throughout North America gathered in Fort Worth, Texas to share their experience with the use of LiDAR (light detection and ranging) remote sensing...
Florida Power & Light takes steps to keep lights on Managing vegetation (that is, trees, bushes and other neighboring plants) around power lines is a top priority for electric utilities. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), unmanaged vegetation can cause electricity...
Reduce common risks and maintain system reliability BY SARA SANKOWICH, Unitil Corporation Most North American electric utilities understand that vegetation management is a key factor in maintaining system reliability. While many utilities have designed and implemented vegetation management programs...
