CoServ leads in reliability with strategic tree trimming
One of the biggest reasons CoServ has some of the most reliable electricity in Texas – backed up by our industry-leading System Average Interruption Duration Index, or SAIDI score – starts with a spinning chainsaw, a bucket truck and a wood chipper.
Morgan Herd and Abel Gonzalez of CoServ’s Vegetation Management Team oversee a dozen contractor crews that trim the trees near more than 2,800 miles of overhead power lines. Still, many CoServ Members may never see them working in their neighborhood simply because the majority of our lines, about 78 percent, are buried underground, especially in residential neighborhoods.
Even if the lines near you are buried, tree trimming is still critically important because the feeder line that delivers electricity to your home likely starts above ground when it leaves the substation.
Vegetation Management’s goal is to prevent outages from ever occurring and the statistics show their hard work is paying off. Less than 10 percent of CoServ’s outages were attributed to tree contact and the average Member had reliable, uninterrupted electric service 99.99 percent of the time in 2023.
“That’s huge. Most utilities have much higher numbers based on their tree contacts,” Morgan said.
Vegetation Management’s work is governed by the International Society of Arboriculture. Their goal is to trim the trees so there’s a 10-foot buffer from the power lines.
“It’s a directional pruning so you train the tree to grow away from our line, not into our line,” said Morgan, “This clearance keeps our lines from blinking or dimming during severe weather. We’re also maintaining the health of the tree as best we can based on where they were planted and where our lines are.”
Each tree trimming crew trims about 1,000 to 1,500 feet of line per day so it’s a monumental task that seemingly never ends. It’s up to Morgan Herd and his team to assign the contractors where to trim and make sure all overhead lines are trimmed every three to four years.