Customer
The leading Gas and Electricity provider for 24.2 million customers in Southern CA. It is the largest utility Company in the US, and more than 6 million customers live within 20 miles of the coast.
Problems to be Solved
Utility companies allocate a significant portion of annual budgets for preventive inspections and vegetation management programs. These include taking preventative measures, proactive monitoring, and maintaining electric assets to minimize disruption caused by trees and secure the transmission and distribution services. Any negligence results in destructive wildfires and tree-falling hazards on utility infrastructure, leading to billions of fines by regulatory authorities and lost customer trust.
In 2014, Company sought to prevent a repeat of the accident at San Bruno near SFO. Multiple homes caught fire due to a gas leak, and eight people died. Destruction of the properties and 499 victims received $565 million as part of a financial settlement. The state, federal, and California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) also imposed a fine of more than $4 billion on those found responsible.
The Company’s vegetation management is a manual process that uses spreadsheets and paper to plan, schedule, and complete vegetation needs. The contract staff expected to complete tree trimming and pole brushing, leading to missing deadlines, inaccurate classification of areas requiring tree trimming, and noncompliance to CPUC (Regulatory) guidelines, resulting in higher costs for overall end-to-end vegetation management.
Solution
To design and deploy vegetation applications product suite to inspect and identify vegetation management needs that meet regulatory compliance. The application should also support context-rich visualizations and actionable vegetation management insights, allowing for data-driven follow-up work and guided workflow for the entire team.
The aerial pre-inspection by drones will help plan and schedule tree-trimming inspections and pole-brushing patrols, tree trimming, and pole brushing. The data captured will be used to highlight zones of grow-in or fall-in vegetation and trees. The native IOS and Android apps provide a superior user experience even in difficult field conditions. The inspector can use the offline capability to access required documents and complete inspections without cellular connectivity for a seamless user experience. Isolation of inspection data from corporate networks enables rapid onboarding of contracting staff, eliminating long lead times to vet and onboard contracting staff to the corporate network. Contractor vetting and challenges to secure the corporate data and network with ever-changing field staff is a major security hole in cyber security management.
Drones provide a new level of accuracy for aerial tree trimming and pole brushing inspections. The drone data will highlight areas of overgrowth or potential hazards. The native IOS and Android apps provide a superior user experience, even in difficult field conditions. The inspector can use the offline capability to access required documents and complete inspections without cellular connectivity for a seamless user experience. Isolation of inspection data from corporate networks enables rapid onboarding of contracting staff, eliminating long lead times to vet and onboard contracting staff to the corporate network.
Business Outcomes: Optimized operations with cost and time savings and regulatory compliance
After using the Anica Inc Vegetation management application suite, the company’s vegetation management operations transformed into a well-orchestrated process to accomplish regulatory compliance and cost savings.
- Optimal operational efficiency: Contractors can be onboarded and trained within a day, with a streamlined inspection, tree trimming, and pole brushing work streams improved planning and coordination.
- Improved bottom line: The company met and exceeded regulatory compliance timelines and mandates, which is a massive accomplishment.
- Greater customer satisfaction: The ease of application to complete the inspection and identification of subject poles resulted in the timely completion of work and cost savings to the customer.
- Follow-Up workflow: The follow-up integration with inspection/Patrol resulted in missed corrections of infractions found, which is a major slip in any utility company.