Presenting eVMS the Total Utility Vegetation Management (UVM) System

Today’s UVM Challenges
Keeping trees and vegetation away from energized transmission and distribution power lines and equipment has never been as critical for utility companies as it is today. The expectations of UVM programs across North America have significantly increased and are being driven by regulators, lawmakers, and customers alike. Utilities must work toward achieving a higher level of effectiveness than they have been expected to meet in the past, and failure in this important activity can result in significant fines, lawsuits, and damage to brand image. To illustrate the urgency and high profile nature of these rising expectations, one needs only look at the August 14th Northeast Blackout and the resulting changes that are occurring regarding transmission UVM programs. Federal agencies and organizations such as FERC, NERC and DOE are actively dealing with UVM related issues and new laws and requirements will be seen in the near future. For example, NERC is in the process of writing new standards for transmission UVM activities and they will impact every transmission UVM program.

These changes are not just occurring at the federal level, nor will they be limited to transmission voltage UVM programs. Many states and Public Service Commissions are reviewing distribution UVM requirements, with an eye to changing current requirements. Whether it is changes to your transmission or distribution UVM programs, you can expect them to be significant.

The Opportunity to Improve
While the utility industry continually embraces new technology in almost all areas of their work, very little has been done regarding UVM. In fact, very few utilities have incorporated new technology into any of the 4 key steps used by most utility companies in North America; namely, scheduling, pre-inspection, performing work, and post-audit. Most of these tasks are currently handled by manually filling out forms and then filing the resulting paperwork. The tragedy is that the utilities are, for the most part, already capturing the correct information. However, they do not have the capability to utilize the information to improve their operations. And to be sure, the information currently obtained in these 4 steps can radically improve UVM activities if it could be utilized. The intent of developing eVMS was to help utilities take the current UVM practices to a new level and fully exploit the capabilities associated with the current processes. The result is a system that assists the utility in determining their short and long-term resource requirements and workload, and to better manage those resources to help ensure the desired results.