FEBRUARY 2012
This is the second of a series of articles discussing our right-of-way and vegetation management program.
Right-of-way work helps keep the lights on Keeping the lights on, homes heated, and powering the daily needs of our members is a job we take seriously at Blue Ridge Electric. Several years ago we implemented a more thorough, innovative right-of-way program that’s overseen by a certified arborist. As a result, the number of outages on our system has been cut in half and we’re now among the best performing utilities in the nation in the area of reliability. Even though power is on 99 percent of the time for our members, we’re setting even higher goals to help us keep focused on the most important service aspect you desire from your electricity provider. Our right-of-way program combines several methods to control vegetation growth — all with the goal of balancing the beauty of our area with providing safe, reliable electricity. The process begins at each designated substation. Our crews are looking for the following threats to reliable electricity: foliage growing underneath power lines, overhanging branches, and dead or diseased trees that could pull down a power line if they fall. As needed for each situation, we hand trim, mow, side trim or use a tall mechanical trimmer to remove foliage that endangers power lines. Just as we have a responsibility to provide reliable electricity, we also must control costs for the membership as part of our right-of-way program.This means that while we’re diligent about leaving landscaped areas such as yards and pastures as we found them, we contain removal costs in rough terrain and areas not normally mowed or maintained by members by leaving vegetation debris that will be naturally biodegradable in these rights of way. A key to our improved reliability over the years has been moving to a six-year cycle. In other words, every inch of our 8,000 miles of power lines is reviewed and trimmed if needed at least once every six years. This helps avoid large growth that’s more likely to cause outages and is also more costly to contain. Following any necessary trimming is another key part of our right-of-way plan: environmentally safe herbicide treatment. In the next article in this series, we’ll discuss this phase as well as how members are contacted before each segment of right-of-way work begins.
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