Use AI and advanced analytics for wise vegetation management
Proper asset management is always essential, but even more critical when assets include power lines that can be threatened by vegetation overgrowth. Unfortunately, the established techniques and processes to deal with this issue are inefficient, and tend to adversely affect system costs and overall safety and reliability. IBM® Vegetation Management, within the Weather Operations Center, is an end-to-end solution that leverages AI and advanced analytics to regularly assess the state of vegetation across the entire service territory. It also identifies those high-risk circuits or corridors that will most likely receive the largest impacts from vegetation overgrowth. Vegetation Management even calculates scores and KPIs to assist you in prioritizing projects — helping drive decision-making from planning, bidding and contracting all the way through to work inspection and auditing.
Key benefits
- Foster effective vegetation planning and monitoring
- Engage in smarter contracting
- Augment cycle-based approaches to improve reliability
- Reduce revenue loss from outages
- Reduce/avoid transmission-based regulatory penalties
- Increase customer satisfaction and worker safety
Benefits of IBM Vegetation Management
Scale
Automatically assess vegetation growth occurring near hundreds of miles of power lines.
Frequency
Prioritize areas where vegetation may threaten power lines.
Cost efficiency
Optimize workloads for preventive maintenance and rapid response, at a fraction of the usual cost.
Testimonials
“ Electricity is an essential part of our lives, and millions of Texans depend on Oncor every day. Vegetation poses a serious risk to power lines and the surrounding areas, but monitoring it is a challenging and time-consuming process. By working with IBM, we are able to use analytics and AI to prioritize high-risk areas. This helps us adapt maintenance operations to improve public safety and service reliability. ”
- Peter Stoltman
- Vegetation Management Program Manager
- Oncor
Success story
The Pedernales Electric Co-op devotes millions of its annual budget to trimming vegetation near Texas power lines. By using IBM Vegetation Management, the Co-op is able to create smarter surveys — with overlays that effectively combine satellite imagery with property maps. Pedernales Electric Co-op creates savings and safety
See IBM Vegetation Management in action
Get access to a full and integrated view of the vegetation situation across your territory.
Isolate and analyze vegetation close to power assets, highlight areas of interest and find coordinates on the fly.
Display regions within your territory with highlighted vegetation scores to prioritize high-risk areas.
Drill down to learn more about the situation in specific corridors. The review card shows the type of assets that might be impacted, recommended actions, vegetation areas, corridor segments, zones and other KPIs.