Taking electricity systems losses seriously--email from Romania

I found your two blogs on the Philippines caps for system losses very interesting, so thanks for providing them. Couldn’t agree with you more; negative incentives produce negative results. And I’ve always wondered about the Cooperatives being able to supply electricity efficiently.

You refer to pilferage as a factor in calculating system losses, and that is important. But I am in Utility Vegetation Management (UVM), and I am wondering if contact with vegetation is calculated into the equation in Philippines. My industry focuses on proactive UVM maintenance to control tree-caused outages, but there is not much focus on system losses through daily tree/powerline contact.

Trees can come into contact with powerlines and not cause an outage for years. The trees will simply brush against the lines day after day, burning the foliage as a result of electricity tracking down into the tree. I spent a number of years in New Zealand (I notice you were in Wellington when I was in Christchurch) and many of their DU networks have thousands of trees in this condition. They are not causing outages, so they are not prioritised – in reality, much of New Zealand UVM is reactive rather than proactive. But what I have always maintained is that if a tree is ‘burning’ on powerlines 24-hrs a day and for year after year, this has to be a large contribution to a DU’s system losses.
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Just so that you know what I’m talking about, I’ve attached from my documents some pics of New Zealand trees in contact with 11kV conductors, as these are examples of what I’m speaking of. One pic is of fast-growing willow trees that have been burning for at least five years. The other is of slow-growing NZ native trees that have been burning for at least 10 years. I’m just trying to get a rough idea of that kind of contact multiplied by thousands of contacts in terms of systems loss.

Frank