‘Birds-eye view’ boosts reliability

The pandemic has provided many of us a chance to step back and gain a new perspective. For a handful of linemen at REC, that is true in a literal sense — and that new perspective will directly benefit member-owners.

Since mid-March, a small group of linemen has been dispatched — with drones — to find potential problems before they can cause an outage. They are using the technology not only to inspect lines and equipment, but also to search for trees near REC’s rights of way that could fall and cause an outage.

As REC sought ways to keep crews safe through social distancing, linemen Jake Michael and Matt Fauver were among those working a bit differently recently.

In REC’s Blue Ridge region, they have walked miles of rights of way. They have driven four-wheelers through rugged, often rocky terrain. And they have deployed drones to inspect miles of power lines and rights of way that would typically take much longer to cover. A lot of the territory they inspected included mountainsides, with steep inclines.

“Re- deploying select line workers at this time furthered three critical goals for REC: safety, reliability and the implementation of new technology to better serve member- owners,” said John D. Hewa, REC president and CEO. “Even in these challenging times, our crews continue to focus on providing reliable electric service. That focus will never change.”

One key area the linemen have focused on includes trees outside the traditional right of way. Partnering with REC’s already robust Vegetation Management department, the linemen have helped find dead, diseased and dying trees that could potentially tumble onto power lines and related equipment. In an effort to improve reliability, REC now looks for potential hazard trees up to 25 feet outside of the right of way.

“It saves so much time, because otherwise you are going on foot or calling for someone to get a four-wheeler,”

Michael said of the drones. “It gives you the chance to get a birds-eye view of the problem as opposed to looking up from the ground. I’d say it cuts the time in half.”

As linemen inspected the rights of way, tree-trimming crews would come in behind them to trim or take down the hazard trees.

While the work has focused on prevention, recent projects also will help with outage restoration.

Along the rights of way, they have met homeowners, whose property they might have to cross to reach damaged equipment. In some cases, they have built new gates to allow REC’s large equipment to pass through, and in other instances they have discovered new and faster paths to rights of way.

“In the middle of the night during a storm, we would not necessarily have that option,” Michael said. “So this will ultimately help us restore power faster.”

Drones inspected miles of power lines and rights of way that would typically take much longer to cover.