Environmental Intelligence Suite

identify vegetation encroaching on power lines, allowing them take preventive action before it becomes a safety hazard.

Most utilities today are leveraging a cycle-based vegetation management approach where trimming is completed in specific areas every few years with emergency work completed as necessary to address pressing threats. Our condition-based insights allow utilities to pivot from this time consuming and inefficient approach to make data driven, prescriptive decisions, that empower utilities with improved reliability and effective allocation of budget. 

Our vegetation related insights are driven by Geiger-Mode LiDAR data or high-resolution spectral satellite imagery. Identifying the three dimensional distance between vegetation and the conductor, is often the most monetized use case case leveraged by our utility customers, and Geiger-Mode LiDAR is generally recommended due to it's precise nature. LiDAR also supports use cases like identifying line sag, pole lean and the distance from energized conductor to ground.

Cost is often a concern for many utilities considering LiDAR, however, Geiger-Mode LiDAR is a new technology replacing the traditional LiDAR approach by applying new camera technology and flying higher and faster to promote reasonable costs for limited vegetation budgets. 

On the other hand, high resolution satellite imagery can be effective for determining vegetation distance to conductor, although error in analytics is often more pronounced due to limitations in satellites that may include the ability to accurately capture poles and wires or differentiate between a bush and a tree. Nonetheless, satellite imagery still proves valuable for use cases like identifying tree species and is used by a number of our customers today.

If you are attending the conference, we look forward to speaking with you in person. In the meantime, to learn more about how a Texas cooperative is leveraging our condition based insights, please click here. 

See you in Milwaukee!