Greg Salisbury- Consumers Energy’s VP of Electric Distribution Engineering-Clearing Trees Near Po...

well it's frustrating obviously we flip the switch you expect the electricity to be there and after a storm sometimes it's not there sometimes it's not even after a storm that that power goes out because of a mother nature the guy who knows that well is Greg Salsbury who's the Consumers Energy vice president of electric distribution engineering joins us on the line as as you guys have uh announced a new effort to try to make sure that power stays a little more reliable some sometimes you well many times Greg you guys uh have no say in the matter Mother Nature is doing it right yeah for sure uh and this year has been another year in a in a running trend of more and more severe weather especially here in in Southwest Michigan so trees are are our perennial top issue and we were super excited uh as the as we made this announcement this week to confirm that we are in our third year of a mass increase in tree trimming uh up to 7,000 miles each year to uh clear those trees and tree limbs and continue to deliver on our commitment to become a better more reliable energy provider well let's call a reliability road map that the consumers introduced with that I mean there's so many trees obviously and near power lines how do you guys determine what needs to be done what gets trimmed back obviously you don't want to butcher tree but uh obviously you've got to make sure ones are out of the way for for those lines how how does that whole plan come together for that we have a very sophisticated model that we add data to each year about how the system's performing um how the tree growth has been happening we use aerial and Satellite photographs and and from that model we prioritize uh which which circuits we're going to trim each year and then we go through a very deliber process using professional arborists to evaluate all the trees on the circuit determine what's the best way to trim the trees so that it's safe for the tree and safe for the power lines then we communicate with the land owners in the area let them know what we're going to do when we're going to do it and then we have our professional tree tree tramming contractors come in and uh and safely execute the work so it's a it's a process that runs on an annual cycle but it's uh it's very deliberate uh in the interest of protecting those trees and yet getting them away from the power line well as many trees as there are and as fast as they grow obviously you can't get to all of them in all of those places do do you feel you're making a dent in this though oh we absolutely are Ken our plan is by 2030 to have every every circuit on a seven-year trim cycle so right now we still have Legacy circuits that haven't been looked at in 10 12 years and and often those are where we see the problems so as we continue this this focus on expanded tree trimming we're moving more and more of our circuits to this seven-year cycle and we know once we get a circuit Trimm there can be up to 60% less outages so it just makes a huge Improvement all right so obviously the the only way to totally get around this is if you buried all the the power lines that's not workable though right yeah you bet so we are burying more than ever we're in the midst of a 10-year uh conversion pilot where we're looking at uh rural circuits that have a lot of tree risk and are also relatively simple to put underground and we're going to use those time miles to prove out to our customers and Regulators that we can be cost effective at doing that and so in those extreme ends of the circuits we will look to do that underground conversion because it'll just be so expensive to keep the trees trimmed in our backbone areas where you see the the traditional construction with the pole and the cross arm and the three wires that's where we're going to use more aggressive tree trimming and more robust construction methods to put in what we call tree wire construction so that those those main trunks of the circuits are very resilient to treat contact that might happen and uh and then those areas that are so sensitive and so difficult to maintain out of the ends of the circuit that's where we'll do the the Strategic conversion from overhead to underground GRE Salsbury from consumer energy on the line with us okay so I've got my house and I've got a power line that's going from from the pole to to the house but I've got a tree that's overhanging it looks like it could come down at any time what do I do about that what's what's kind of the mechanism is there a mechanism to to maybe get you guys out there look at that one and and take care of it oh great question our focus is on the wires out by the road the wires from the Transformer to your house uh we encourage people to maintain those um using their own private contracted tree service so that those trees in your yard are definitely uh part of what we would look to you as the homeowner to manage will take care of the ones out on that main Corridor now you're always welcome to call us and we'll come out and take a look and and uh and do what we can to reduce the risk but that's uh that's a a fact that I'm not sure everybody's as aware of but just the way the whole Rules of Engagement are um we handle the trees out in the RightWay around the power lines from the Transformer to the house um we're counting on the homeowners to keep those trees trim back and away from that service line right consumer energy clearing over 7,000 miles of trees near power lines this year they stay part of their reliability road map the guy who's working on that is Greg Salsbury consumer enery vice president of electric distribution engineering Greg good luck with the tri training process all right all right thanks for having me K take care