Optimizing Vegetation Management and Asset Inspection with AI

Mother Nature is wonderful in a variety of ways, but She is also laying siege to many of our utilities. In fact, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has identified failed vegetation management as the single biggest factor in electric power outages. It is a never-ending struggle that is both costly and endangers lives.

Take the Northeast Blackout on August 12, 2003, for example. It was the world's second most widespread blackout in history at the time, affecting over 55 million people. The subsequent fines and civil lawsuits totaled billions of dollars, and utilities’ reputations were soiled. All because tree branches came in contact with power lines in Ohio. Had vegetation been managed in a more effective manner, the incident's impact may not have been nearly as significant.

Reinventing Vegetation Management and Asset Inspection

In our ever-changing world, customers around the globe are constantly demanding less and less outage time from their providers. These customers are not concerned with circumstances, or logistics—they want to see results. This mounting industry pressure has created challenges that exposed the legacy vegetation management and asset inspection systems as inefficient and outdated. But the fight cannot be abandoned; It needs to be reinvented.

Cue GE Digital Grid’s Visual Intelligence Platform (VIP). A strong modern grid needs a vegetation management and asset inspection solution powered by 21st-century technology.

Driven by Artificial Intelligence and guided by humans, VIP creates a 3D visualization of the utility’s territory data, factoring in legacy statistics, growth rates, and weather patterns to predict problem areas six months or more in advance.

The risk analysis is then translated into a 2D map pinpointing locations for trimming and asset inspection crews to prioritize, delivering the actionable insights needed to make data-driven decisions. Visual Intelligence eliminates “human-bottlenecks” in the data evaluation process, enabling asset risk calculations in a fraction of the time. That’s why many utilities are moving away from an annual “blind” rotational trimming and asset inspection strategy to a purely outcome-based one. After all, for many utilities, asset inspection and vegetation management are among the largest OPEX budget line items.

The statistics speak for themselves:

• 30% reduction of actual trimming work
• 30% reduction in tree-caused outages
• 90% gain in data productivity

The data is clear. The Platform’s automated identification of encroachment areas and asset defects reduces outages, increases compliance, improves safety, and reduces the probability of catastrophic events such as wildfires or major regional outages like the Northeast Blackout.

If you’d like to learn more about GE Digital Grid’s Visual Intelligence solution and the future of preventive vegetation management and asset inspection, read the eBook now: Top 3 Benefits of an AI-Driven Visual Intelligence Solution.