This Event will explore Darcy's refreshed technology landscape of enhanced vegetation management solutions, as well as how utilities have successfully scaled their use to address a major cause of outages and O&M cost driver.

About the topic

Tree-related outages, like those on August 14th, 2003, in the US, are not rare and are one of the leading causes of electric power disruptions when trees come into contact with overhead power lines. The Federal government introduced regulations with penalties to ensure utilities protect their T&D assets from vegetation, making spending on T&D infrastructure protection mandatory, regardless of economic conditions. Several factors, including the tightening of regulatory frameworks, the need for more T&D infrastructure, and extreme weather events, are driving increased spending on T&D infrastructure, which also necessitates a rise in Utility Vegetation Management (UVM).

For example:

• CenterPoint Energy has allocated $39 million for managing vegetation across 55,000 miles of distribution lines.
• PG&E has budgeted $87.6 million for the maintenance of its 18,500 miles of transmission lines.
• FPL (Florida Power & Light) has allocated a total of $91 million for its vegetation management program, which covers 6,500 miles of transmission lines and 67,000 miles of distribution lines.

Utilities annually inspect and manage vegetation along thousands of miles of power lines, making it a top O&M cost driver. Vegetation Management Programs (VMPs) are typically budgeted yearly, with metrics like dollars per mile often driven by regulations. Emerging technologies allow utilities to shift from cycle-based to risk-based trimming, optimizing budgets with a focus on risk mitigation. This event will provide an overview of the vendor market landscape, categorizing technology vendors based on their capabilities and the types of data they process. Additionally, we will hear from a prominent vendor in this space about their approach to optimizing VMPs.

Sources: CenterPoint Energy, CenterPoint Energy, FERC, Harris Williams, PG&E, PG&E,FPL

About the innovator

AiDash: AiDash provides an AI-based, satellite image analytics platform to generate insights on infrastructure. Initially developed to identify and track vegetation encroachment for overhead T&D power lines, the AiDash solution is also developing to suit new use cases (such as climate-risk planning and biodiversity evaluation).