AiDASH: Protecting Against Outages

Using high-resolution satellite data and AI algorithms to monitor and model vegetation growth around vital operations, AiDASH helps utilities keep the grid clear of potential dangers. 

For many utilities, vegetation management is a critical part of protecting customers from outages, keeping them safe, and protecting the environment. The goal is to know as much as possible about what’s growing along electric lines before storms, falling trees, or overgrowth can disrupt service. 

Managing thousands of miles of distribution lines is no simple task. Conventional approaches to vegetation management include helicopter patrols, drone flights, and manual inspections, all of which can be time-consuming and expensive

National Grid Partners saw an opportunity to test out the system in a Massachusetts trial deployment. AiDASH was tasked with optimizing National Grid’s trim cycle—the schedule of pruning vegetation near electric lines—from five years to nearly six years. That means less time and money wasted working on trees that don’t yet need to be trimmed. AiDASH assessed which areas were most likely to have falling trees and developed a list of hotspots that should be prioritized for hazard tree removal, saving time, reducing risks and potential outages. The firm’s software sends images of everything that’s happening along every power line into computer models that can predict future risk – and help utilities know where to act. The solution provides more than just information: AiDASH offers an end-to-end workflow and implements the vegetation management process itself, from deploying contractors to auditing their work.

The results speak for themselves: Within the first two years of deploying AiDASH in Massachusetts, National Grid saw outages caused by falling trees and limbs drop 30 percent.

National Grid Partners' backing will not only help AiDASH scale in vegetation management for utilities, but to manage vegetation across other critical infrastructure such as railways and oil & gas pipelines. In the end, the startup's focus will expand across all physical plant segments, helping to grow the business while managing the growth of potentially disruptive vegetation.