Criticality analysis for improving maintenance, felling and pruning cycles in power lines

Abstract

This paper deals with the process of criticality analysis in overhead power lines, as a tool to improve maintenance, felling & pruning programs. Felling & pruning activities are tasks that utility companies must accomplish to respect the servitudes of the overhead lines, concerned with distances to vegetation, buildings, infrastructures and other networks crossings. Conceptually, these power lines servitudes can be considered as failure modes of the maintainable items under our analysis (power line spans), and the criticality analysis methodology developed, will therefore help to optimize actions to avoid these as other failure modes of the line maintainable items. The approach is interesting, but another relevant contribution of the paper is the process followed for the automation of the analysis. Automation is possible by utilizing existing companies IT systems and databases. The paper explains how to use data located in Enterprise Assets Management Systems, GIS and Dispatching systems for a fast, reliable, objective and dynamic criticality analysis. Promising results are included and also discussions about how this technique may result in important implications for this type of businesses