How CATALYST implemented condition-based vegetation analysis to enhance monitoring and emergency response preparedness.
The Project
CATALYST partnered with a leader in the regulated gas and electric utility industry in North America to monitor their transmission network across Canada’s Prince Edward Island –an area vulnerable to hurricanes, blizzards, flooding and ice storms.
With much of the infrastructure traversing remote, isolated landscape, the risk to the network’s security from climate and weather events posed significant strategic and operational challenges, not least responding to major events to prevent significant outages.
The project sought to map the entirety of the network and then measure the proximity of pylons and power lines to surrounding forestry, which would highlight risk of falling trees and wildfire spreading along the power corridor.
CATALYST Solution
Implementing satellite vegetation analysis enabled decision-makers within the organization to quickly, easily, and regularly monitor their network’s risk in the event of extreme weather incidents.
Tangible benefits from the solution include:
- Increased Community and Contractor Safety:
Complete oversight of vegetation risk across the network, in particular high-risk locations, that can be handled proactively to avoid a potential outage or incident. - Improved Grid Resilience & OPEX Cost:
More precise data means more effective budget allocation and spend,while also lowering risks to the network. - Enhance Contractor Work Planning:
With more precise information and specificsof task requirements, teams can bid for work more accurately, successfully remove tree hazards and maximize the marginal operational value. - Improved Contractor Management:
Greater oversight of assets maximizes the efficiency of maintenance and enables a validation process to ensure proper and accurate field work and risk mitigation.