With high tree density—nearly double the national average—and challenging terrain that ranges from mountains to swamps, Southside Electric Cooperative (SEC) needed a better way to manage vegetation across its rural service area. By implementing Clearion, SEC created a centralized system to plan, assign, and track vegetation work in-house. Crews now have clear visibility into upcoming work and a consistent method for documenting completed tasks, laying the foundation for future tools like drones and satellite imagery.
This interview with Matt Hall, vegetation management supervisor for Southside Electric Cooperative, originally appeared in Newsline, the official newsletter for the Utility Arborists Association (UAA). For more information on joining UAA, visit their website.
Can you tell us about your role at Southside Electric Cooperative and how long you’ve been involved in vegetation management?
I am Vegetation Management Supervisor at Southside Electric, and I have been working here for the last 5 years, as a Utility Forester II and in my current position. Prior to utility vegetation management, I was in the forest management field working for the Virginia Department of Forestry for 8 years.
As Vegetation Management Supervisor I help oversee all vegetation work that occurs at SEC (side trim operations, cost plus crews, brush control crews, etc). I also help procure all vegetation contracts as well as plan out all future vegetation work. I provide oversight into all member-related issues and monitor to ensure contractors are following the Coop’s safety standards.
What makes vegetation management particularly unique or challenging in SEC’s service territory?
Southside Electric is a very rural electric cooperative. SEC contains a large amount of cross-country rights-of-ways on our infrastructure. Our terrain also varies greatly from the mountains in our western district to the swamps in our eastern district. Here we average about 200 trees per line mile, which is about double the amount of the national average tree per line mile (96.1). With that being said, one of our biggest challenges in providing safe and reliable power, is power interruptions from trees outside the rights-of-way.
What technologies has SEC adopted in recent years to improve vegetation management practices?
When I took over as Vegetation Management Supervisor, I had just completed a business case for SEC to utilize some sort of vegetation management software program. I felt it very important to have this since technology is ever changing in our industry. Our first goal was to give the contractors working on our system a functional program to use as a tool for their work. This program allows them to see our infrastructure, the work ahead of them, and the ability to enter the work they complete. (All with minimal effort on the contractor’s part).
Anyone’s vegetation software program is only as successful and accurate as the information the contractors enter. So, with the help of the development team, we fine-tuned it to make sure we would get “buy in” from the contractors. We also use this tool as an assessment tool for storing our located hazard trees on our system and assigning them to our contractors. Our brush control contractors also have all of their work assigned to them through the software.
How are tools like drones, LiDAR, or satellite imagery being used in your program today?
To date we have not utilized any of this in our UVM program, but by having a good usable software program, this has laid the groundwork for us to employ different technologies in years to come. We felt this was important before we did anything, because when inundated with information, a good program to store the data is a must. SEC has had conversations with different companies about utilizing this technology and are always open to new ideas to better our vegetation program. We are also exploring the idea of usings drone in house to patrol line and have created a committee to explore this opportunity.
What role is data collection and analysis playing in how you build out your vegetation management strategy?
Reliability is very important to SEC. Part of our mission statement is to provide our members with safe and reliable power. We keep records of all of our outages, which help us paint a picture of not only where vegetation is failing, but also what the reason for failure was. We investigate the outages and look to see what correlation we can find.
How do you train or support your team as new tools and systems are rolled out?
I am lucky to have good support from the vegetation team at SEC. Our foresters are very proficient with our software and have really taken ownership in ensuring that contractors are able to successfully use it. They are available and able to answer questions. Since we are a cooperative, we are able to work closely with our limited number of contractors.
How is technology helping SEC better manage risk from weather events or fast-growing vegetation?
Southside Electric is a very rural cooperative, with lots of double-sided vegetation rights-of-ways. Weather events cannot be prevented, and during a major event, generally the green trees are the ones causing power interruptions. Our system has a high number of Virginia Pines, which makes storm hardening very difficult for us. Our hope in the near future is to be able to utilize drones for post storm patrols, to help us with storm damage assessments.
What role does innovation play in maintaining compliance with environmental and regulatory standards?
Having good records of areas that need special attention or have environmental/regulatory standards is crucial. Technology allows us to store this information, to ensure all laws and regulations are followed. It gives not only our vegetation group a heads up, but also our contractors.
What do you think the future of utility vegetation management looks like in rural co-op settings like yours?
The last 10+ years have shown great growth in technology with UVM. The “boots on the ground” work is a staple in our industry, but in the future, I see the ability of having access to real-time satellite imagery with high clarity, where we can locate trees outside of our right of ways without leaving our office, giving us the ability to prevent power interruptions before they happen. With SEC having 200+ trees per line mile, our vegetation group has a large task in providing reliability, and I could see real-time satellite imagery being a game changer for us.
