Safer is Smarter - Kauai Island Utility Cooperative

Trees can be a power line’s worst enemy. Strong
winds and storms can topple trees or shatter
branches, pulling down power lines and causing
outages. Sometimes, even heavily damaged lines
remain energized and can electrify trees and
nearby objects.
Stray voltage and arcs are capable of serious
injury, or death to personnel who come into
contact with or possibly even close to such events.
Last year, nearly 20 percent of KIUC’s outages
were due to trees on lines. That is why KIUC
maintains an aggressive vegetation management
program using four full­time contract crews to
control the tree­line contact problem.
KIUC’s right­of­way vegetation management
program is designed to minimize service
interruptions from overgrown or fallen trees along
rights of way for transmission and distribution
circuits. Each year, every foot of every line—more
than 1,165 miles of overhead line—is inspected to
identify distribution and transmission problems,
including hazardous vegetation.
Trees encroaching on power lines—or that are
likely to do so within a year—require trimming.
Vegetation Management
Minimizing Service Interruptions
Distribution
Service Drop
Telephone
and Cable lines
By Anne Barnes
Transmission
Transformer
Street Light
Know Your
Utility Lines
◼ KIUC trims trees
surrounding
transmission and
distribution lines.
◼ We do not trim
trees to maintain
service drops.
OCTOBER 2010 35