The Virginia State Corporation Commission approved Appalachian Power’s three-year vegetation management pilot program in February 2013. That allowed the company to trim, remove, or treat trees and brush near electrical lines on 30 distribution circuits across the company’s Virginia service territory. Since the launch of the program, hundreds of contract workers have completed vegetation management activities on more than 1,600 of the 2,200 line miles identified for inclusion in the pilot. The work included nearly 300,000 tree trims and 293,000 tree removals. APCO says the frequency of tree-related outages has decreased nearly 34 percent, and the service restoration times have also improved. The program is set to end later this year, but APCO plans to work toward a four-year-cycle based program similar to the company’s program in West Virginia.
