Electricity Today T&D Magazine

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 approach to vegetation management incorporates four key components that occur simultaneously: cycle pruning, hazard tree mitigation, a mid-cycle review, and a forestry reliability assessment. This four-component program is appropriate for most electric utilities and can be implemented with either internal or external vegetation management resources.

CYCLE PRUNING
For any utility creating or improving a VM program, cycle pruning should be the primary focus. Cycle pruning is, essentially, preventative maintenance, and technicians and arborists should utilize...