Cloud-Integrated Vegetation Management: The Future of Vegetation Management
October 06, 2023
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Vegetation management is the practice of controlling unwanted vegetation in order to protect people, property, and infrastructure. It is an important part of maintaining a safe and reliable electrical grid, as well as other critical infrastructure.
Cloud-integrated vegetation management (CIVM) is a new approach to vegetation management that uses cloud-based software to integrate and streamline all aspects of vegetation management, from planning and execution to monitoring and reporting.
CIVM offers a number of advantages over traditional vegetation management methods, including:
- Improved efficiency and effectiveness: CIVM can help organizations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their vegetation management operations by automating tasks, providing real-time data and insights, and enabling collaboration between different teams.
- Reduced costs: CIVM can help organizations to reduce the cost of vegetation management by optimizing scheduling, reducing waste, and improving visibility into costs.
- Improved safety: CIVM can help to improve safety by reducing the need for workers to be exposed to hazardous conditions.
- Enhanced sustainability: CIVM can help organizations to enhance their sustainability by reducing the use of herbicides and other chemicals, and by promoting the use of integrated vegetation management strategies.
CIVM is still a relatively new technology, but it is rapidly gaining adoption among utilities and other organizations responsible for vegetation management. As the technology continues to mature, it is expected to play an increasingly important role in the future of vegetation management.
Here are some specific examples of how CIVM is being used to improve vegetation management today:
- Utilities are using CIVM to reduce the risk of vegetation-related outages. CIVM can help utilities to identify areas where vegetation is at risk of growing into power lines, and to develop and implement vegetation management plans to mitigate that risk.
- Municipalities are using CIVM to improve the appearance of public spaces. CIVM can help municipalities to develop and implement vegetation management plans that promote the growth of desirable vegetation and control unwanted vegetation.
- Transportation departments are using CIVM to improve the safety of roadways. CIVM can help transportation departments to identify and remove vegetation that is blocking sightlines or posing other hazards to motorists.
CIVM is a powerful tool that can help organizations of all sizes to improve their vegetation management operations. As the technology continues to mature and adoption grows, CIVM is expected to play an increasingly important role in the future of vegetation management.
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Power System Optimization
Utility companies keep a common goal to boost their power production and supply system. They put their best into safe energy distribution even though customers have varied demands for power consumption. With timely maintenance of substation assets, the power system can work ten times more fluid, surpassing the expectations.
1. Increased Lifespan of equipment
Besides assets, the phenomenon of maintenance also implies equipment sets used at substations. Regular inspection and repair keeps a check on wear & tear to calculate the correct depreciation value at least once in three months. By doing so, utilities proceed to increase the equipment’s life span instead of working heedlessly.
2. Workplace Safety
Customers don’t care about the reason behind power outages, all they want is to get electricity back as early as possible. The fault may be a fire in wires or inefficiencies of old transformers that have failed to carry a high load, but these put the workmen’s safety in danger. So, be careful. An extra chunk of waiting time is better than hurting people.
3. Lowered unexpected costs
Assets are not for temporary use. Utilities put them for long-term and to have endless benefits. Hence, engineers should proficiently prefigure the peak maintenance time to upgrade the outdated machines and avoid sudden hindrances in production.
How Do Modern Electric Utilities Maintain Substations?
Substation maintenance strategy has undergone tremendous transformations over the years. The dominance of automation and digitization continues to create a better world.
No doubt manual interference (for fixing the damage, replacing assets, and other servicing jobs) is still a vital thing, automation effectively integrates a structure that protects, monitoring, control, and boosts the power production capacity at different substations.
Digitization and automation also encompasses leading technology like SCADA, GIS, CIS, SCMS, and assest evaluation methodolies to make maintenance easier. Consequently, the stress of system failure doesn’t hover over engineers’ minds.
They now utilize advanced computerized frameworks that quickly observe the sustain and its adjacent functioning units to extract adequate data and deliver the same to utilities.
Thereby, utility managers do further analysis and seek a suitable, on-time solution before any big problem shows up.
Also Give a Read to : Introducing Proactive Substation maintenance With AriesPro SMAA
As stated earlier, technology gives a notable impact globally. It has added enough curiosity and proficiency to everyone. Getting back to the topic, utilities leveares automation when smooth functioning is considered.
Holding on such facts, SMAA produces real-time data to make electric utilities capable of keeping substation assets in a good condition free from any faults. Appa’s other aim is to establish uninterrupted communication among different units so that maintenance can be done right on time.
SMAA is an AriesPro-owned cloud based mobile and web/mobile friendly app that monitors substations, fetches essential data, and dispatches the information to respective members at utilities.
For a detailed overview, visit the company’s website at ariespro.com and check out available products.
Final Words
Waiting for substations to suffer from operational issues or till it reaches the highest potential is not definitely a right decision.
Remember, regular inspection and maintenance can bring exceptional improvement in the production capabilities, which is possible only when utilities shift to automation, data analytics, and machine learning methods.
We welcome recommendations and insights that we missed adding in this blog. You all are free to share your thoughts for betterment of utility industries or the world itself. Looking forward to having the expected response. Our comment section is a great feedback sharing segment too. Go ahead.