CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — Mon Power, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., is more frequently using a method in its vegetation-management operations that is helping prevent unnecessary power outages more efficiently and effectively.
“First Energy has been using saws and helicopters since the late eighties,” Todd Meyers, a spokesperson for the company said. “You’re seeing more of those now. I think we have seven ships up right now doing trimming along distribution and transmission lines in West Virginia.”
An increase in the use of aerial saws has coincided with less frequent power outages associated with severe weather since 2012.
“That [year] about 37 percent of all outages were caused by trees,” he said. “Just a couple years later, we noted –we’ve been doing more vegetation-management– that number’s dropped from 37 percent to 30 percent. So, we’re trying to push that number down.”
Meyers noted this method was not intended to be a replacement for conventional tree-trimming methods such as crews with bucket trucks or tree climbers, but it does cut down on the risk of injury to workers using those methods.
The FAA has monitored and certified this practice as safe and has certified Mon Power’s use as safe since 1988.
Arieal saws also work more efficiently than conventional methods.
“We can usually cut anywhere between 10 to 12 miles a week,” Roger Freedman, vegetation-management supervisor said. “On average, that may take manual crews upwards of potentially a month to do. So, we don’t have the cost and the environment impact of having ground crews do that type of work. We can do this strictly from the air.”
The only crews needed would work in tandem with the helicopter by flagging traffic and removing limbs and smaller branches from roadways, trails, waterways or other sensitive areas.
The helicopter pilots execute the work by maneuvering the saw’s multiple 24-inch rotary blades to cut cleanly and rapidly through tree limbs up to 10 inches in diameter. Suspended from a vertical boom beneath the helicopter, the saw works to trim both sides of a 10-to-12-mile right-of-way.
For pilot Todd Gillespie with Rotar Blade, a South Carolina-based company Mon Power has contracted to perform this work, the trick is cutting it straight consistently.
“It’s like learning to fly again,” he said. “It’s totally, totally different than normal flying. It kinda drags you around because it weighs so much and as you’re dragging it through the trees, it kinda jerks you around a little bit. It’s totally different.”
Mon Power expects to invest about $72 million in 2015 to trim trees and control vegetation along more than 4,500 miles of power lines, including 700 miles of transmission lines by the end of the year.
“It’s a job that’s never done,” Meyers said. “We’ll be back on this transmission line once every five years to look at it, probably with a helicopter sometime between eight and 10 years from now and in between times we’re out here just looking for specific trees that might cause us trouble.”
Mon Power typically uses personal contacts, door hangers, newspaper advertisements and other methods to alert property owners and local officials that the aerial saw will be trimming in their area. For more information abou the aerial saw program, customers can call 1-800-686-0022.