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Utilities Business Review | Monday, July 08, 2024
Combining digital workflows, GIS layers, LiDAR-classified point clouds, and augmented reality can reduce costs, drive operational efficiency, and contribute to a more sustainable electrical grid.
Fremont, CA: Digital technology is being utilized to streamline vegetation management in the US electricity network, which includes power plants and many high-voltage transmission lines. This is crucial to reduce wildfire risks and ensure safety, as vegetation management is a top operational expenditure.
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Traditional vegetation management methods, like helicopter or foot patrols, cause data silos, communication gaps, and human error, leading to hazardous tree sightings and difficulty in precise location capture, prompting many utilities to adopt enterprise asset management solutions. These modern vegetation management practices incorporate the following:
Digital Workflows
Utilities need better data to reduce outages, meet budget constraints, and build resilient networks. A single solution that coordinates office and field operations, integrates data from multiple sources and uses artificial intelligence to automatically identify and categorize hazards can eliminate silos and inefficiencies. This data is more accessible, providing the basis for comprehensive analysis to inform future action plans and asset investment decisions. Foresters can use mobile devices for hazard tree evaluation.
Spatial Insight
A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a crucial tool for utilities to manage and analyze large amounts of data related to vegetation management. It allows visualization and analysis of vegetation, weather patterns, and other factors impacting vegetation growth. GIS technology organizes assets by location, creating a system of record and history of work activities on individual spans, bays, towers, and circuits. Incorporating GIS data layers, such as landowner parcel information, wildfire risk, protected species ranges, and outage information, helps vegetation managers make critical decisions.
Lidar
Utility companies can create a digital network model by converting LiDAR point clouds into GIS information, enabling an accurate inventory of assets like poles, structures, spans, and bays. They can create a canopy-colored risk map of vegetation along the network using minimum voltage clearance distance (MVCD) standards or NERC standards. This data can reduce operating expenses and manual labor costs by eliminating the need for costly helicopter line patrols or boots-on-the-ground assessments.
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality systems can aid fieldworkers in locating trees in remote forests by displaying LiDAR points and symbology, reducing guesswork and expediting work. This technology can help utility companies rethink vegetation management, ensuring safe electricity delivery while minimizing environmental impacts and costs. Combining digital workflows, GIS layers, LiDAR-classified point clouds, and augmented reality can reduce costs, drive operational efficiency, and contribute to a more sustainable electrical grid.
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