How environmental factors impact line performance

Field experience from Southwest Europe

Joo Gomes-Mota, Ana Brantes

Lus Campos Pinto

Francisco Azevedo

Albatroz Engineering
Lisbon, Portugal
[gomes.mota, ana.brantes]@
albatroz-eng.com

Direco de Explorao
REN, Rede Elctrica Nacional, SA
Lisbon, Portugal
campospinto@ren.pt

CENTRIA, FCT,
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Lisboa, Portugal
fmaa@fct.unl.pt

Abstract Long series of field data obtained from exploitation

and maintenance of electricity grids from 10kV to 400kV have
shown the prevalence of environmental factors as the primary
influence on the performance of over-head lines in Southwest
Europe. Vegetation and clearance, lightning and birds come at
the top of concerns; forest fires, fog and pollution follow and
broad similarities were observed across territories and voltage
levels. The main environmental factors affecting grids are
introduced and a strategy to establish the nexus of cause that
binds environmental factors, effects on power lines observed
during inspections and grid events is proposed. Field data for
distribution and transmission grids are presented to illustrate
some of the hypotheses for causal links.
Keywords-component: power transmission lines;
distribution reliability; environmental factors; correlation.

I.

power

INTRODUCTION

estimated service life. Existing corridors, towers, conductors

and other components have been upgraded and uprated to such
an extent and preventive inspection and maintenance have
reached such high standards that most issues found during
preventive maintenance inspections relate to the environment
rather than OHL parts. Whether absolute number of
environment issues has increased during the last 20 years may
be debatable, but there is consensus that their relative weight
has increased, which leads to an increased apparent relevance.
This paper focuses on the major environment issues
affecting OHL in Portugal and, to a lesser extent, Spain and
France and how they are studied and correlated with OHL
maintenance and reliability. Previous work at REN, the
Portuguese Transmission System Operator describes how
environmental analysis influences maintenance of OHL and
substations [1] and how to assess operational risk based on
environmental and asset data [2].

For the past two decades, quality of service of most

electrical transmission and distribution grids has increased as a
result of more resources allocated to maintenance and
exploitation, higher regulatory standards, international
cooperation between transmission companies, competition at
least in some market and, primarily, rising client demands for
total amount of electricity, higher availability (fewer and
shorter supply interruptions) and better power quality (more
voltage stability, less flicker, less harmonic noise).

Section II introduces the main environmental factors that

affect OHL; section III presents the information architecture to
handle inspection and asset data; section IV introduces the
nexus of cause that correlates environmental factors to
inspection findings and grid events. Section V shows some
field examples and Section VI concludes with a discussion on
current results and direction of current research.

Simultaneously, the rise of environmental concerns

changed the way power systems are designed and exploited.
Environment should be regarded in broader sense than wildlife
and should include all stakeholders and ecosystems that
environ power systems, with the exception of those involved
for professional duties. In the remainder of the paper the
authors will focus on the particular case of over-head power
lines (OHL), the grid components that are more sensitive to
environmental concerns and face the higher challenges during
project. In many countries, these concerns mean that short to
medium term (1 to 5 years) quality of service upgrades can not
be achieved with new OHL since permits and public clearances
usually take longer than that to obtain. Some transmission line
projects have been waiting for more than a decade before a
solution acceptable to all parties is found.

This section refers each of the main environmental factors

(defined in the broad sense as before). In the final subsection,
lesser factors are referred. It should be noticed that on-going
research could lead to the modification of the ranking of
environmental factors, at least to some specific OHL issues.

Thus, needs for quantity, availability and quality have been

fulfilled with existing OHL; many of them are close to their

II.

ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS AFFECTING OHL

The analysis of a decade of events on the Portuguese

transmission grid operated by REN shows that more than 85%
of events were originated on OHL. The cause for the event was
identified on more than 90% of the cases, and an original list of
40 causes were aggregated in 20 categories to associate issues
of the same nature and minimize the evanescence of rare
occurrences across too many categories. Environmental causes
account for 77% of events; notably, human errors account for
less than 2% of OHL related events. It should be noticed that
immediate causes of primary events were considered, but one
should be aware that there are causes that correlate each other
(e.g. high intensity wind can contribute to tree triggered events,

fog and pollution reinforce each other) and events that result
from previous events (lightning on OHL often triggers events
inside substations).
A. Vegetation and Clearance
Vegetation is a major concern for all operators of power
lines. Transmission operators have few events triggered by
trees (see Section V) but high voltage and medium voltage
lines come closer to the trees, the ground and human activities.
Trees and agriculture are special since they evolve over
time in a manner that depends on many environmental factors
difficult to evaluate from a central office. Hence, operators
conduct regular inspections to assess tree growth, land use and
road conditions to monitor distances (also known as clearances
or right-of-way). The way operators look at the right-of-way
depends on regulation: if they hold a permit to fly over the
ground and a mandate to clear the right-of-way, they are likely
to remove any type of tree; if they own the ground, they might
create a dirt track along the line and fence it from nearby farms.
In some cases a better balance with the environment is
achieved: in Portugal, transmission lines are built high enough
not to disturb cork oak, a protected species and significant
source of revenues for farmers; in Finland, a transmission line
corridor was used as a corridor for butterflies to connect two
high value habitats [3].
Inspection techniques that incorporate LiDAR measures in
routine inspection yield thorough clearance maps that are used
to improve safety while providing an accurate estimate of the
amount and location of vegetation to be cleared. Moreover, it
provides farmers and neighbours with a quantitative tool to
assess a fair and safe use of the right-of-way. One step further
is to characterize all these factors in a time and geo-referenced
database [4], [5] that can be used as an input.
However, traditional clearance rules can hardly cope with
nature in scenarios like the North of Spain, where trees are 30
to 40 meters high and medium voltage lines to remote villages
are 8m above ground. Doing frequent tree trimming is
necessary due to high growth rates but very difficult due to
slopes from 30 to 40 (Figure 1).
Clearance to ground and human artifacts is very important
to medium voltage OHL. Low voltage and communication
lines, street lamps and cameras, publicity billboards, television
antennae and many other objects are placed near OHL by
people unaware of the risk factors involved and applicable
regulation.

Figure 2 Crosss-view of LiDAR: OHL in red, house in blue; video snapshot

Construction is a special case since permits are required but

sometimes they are overlooked. Figure 2 shows a case where
clearance to the chimney (orange line) is only 0.15m above the
regulation minimum. A higher clearance is recommended to
cope with adverse conditions.
B. Lightning
A fraction of 25% of all OHL events in the sample was
attributed to lightning strikes. This is the single most important
environmental factor to affect the performance of OHL.
The association of lightning to grid events is based on a
network of 14 antennae dispersed across the Iberian Peninsula.
The data of the antennae are processed by specialized software
to produce a list of lightning with localization, polarity,
intensity and other data [6].
The common way to link line trippings with lightning is to
search the list of lightnings for a strike simultaneous with the
grid event. Upon finding a match, the tracing of the OHL is
mapped against the localization of the lightning strike defined
by an ellipse centered on the most likely location and with an
area that reflects the localization uncertainty (it often has more
than 10km along the main axis). If an intersection is found, the
event is attributed to lightning.
C. Forest fires
The influence of forest fires in the operation of OHL grid is
twofold: a) the particles in the air and the heat may facilitate
flashovers between conductors and firefighting operation on
the ground may require the interruption of energy supply to
safeguard people on the ground. The two effects combined
represent 19% of grid events in the sample.
As forest fires affect large areas in Portugal and Spain,
dedicated geo-referenced tools are available to the public for
various uses. There are tools with the location of fires in real
time, others that record past burnt areas. Some warn of risk
thresholds in the near future. Combined with survey data they
offer a valuable insight of the past but also of what could
happen in locations with similar conditions of weather, soil,
humidity and human activities.
As the public information is directed at end users in the
general public, it is useful for the experts to be able to
reverse the tools and functions to understand the sensitivity
of the indices to each of the primary factors.

Figure 1 Cross-section view of LiDAR: OHL in red, vegetation in green,

ground in brown; video snapshot

D. Storks and other birds

While not unique to the Iberian Peninsula and there are
recent reports of storks nesting on OHL in France storks are a
special cause of concern both for transmission and distribution

grids in Portugal and Spain. Storks are not the only birds that
affect OHL. Birds of prey, ducks and other species could hurt
themselves against the conductors but normally they do not
affect energy distribution.

to the performance of the grid. They are stored with the intent
of correlating with other apparent event data and inspection
findings. These include temperature, humidity, wind speed and
direction, resistivity of the ground, tower foot resistance.

During the years different approaches of dissuasion and

support have been tried with ensuing debates on their
efficiency. Nowadays, the current approach is to combine
dissuasion to protect the grid from birds on the hazardous
locations, warning to protect the birds from injuries and
support to nests on safe locations. Figure 3 shows, on the left, a
line with bird flight diverters to minimize collisions and protect
bird life; the effects of nests in hazardous locations is shown on
the right; in spite of all anti-nesting devices mounted on the
cross-section of a transmission tower, storks managed to create
a nest inside it and their droppings are deteriorating the left
insulator chain. Finally, Figure 6 shows examples of a nest built
on a safe location with the help of nest platforms.

An important contribution is also provided by asset

information and inspection findings as the on-going research
suggests that multiple factors concur to a single event unlike
the current representation that identifies a unique cause.
III.

INFORMATION STRUCTURE

Storing information from so many disparate sources was a

major task of the research. The architecture is based on a web
of four databases referenced through space and time
coordinates that cover all aspects of the analysis: physical and
asset representation, circuits and dispatch configurations,
environment representation and equipment condition including
age, inspection findings and maintenance actions. Applications
with different purposes can read and write on the databases
which have time and authority records to trace change history.
Data sets come in different formats, different update rates
and must be all stored with time and authority to allow for
orderly replacement by newer sets.

Figure 3 - Bird flight diverters; nest and droppings on insulators

Birds were the cause of 17% of OHL events in the ten year
sample. To monitor and characterize the stork factor, regular
airborne inspections are devoted to assess the number and
status of anti-nesting devices, nest platforms and nests with the
main purpose of wildlife protection. These maps help establish
the evolution of bird populations and how they affect OHL.
E. Fog and pollution
The last main environmental factor is fog and pollution,
including marine pollution, industrial and road pollutants.
Experience has shown that their effect is higher if they are
combined. Together they represent 8% of the grid events
recorded.
Data on pollution and fog is piecemeal: localization is poor,
quantitative definitions of fog are missing. Pollution maps are
available only for urban or industrial areas (where there are
fewer OHL) and geographical data about zones subject to fog
and pollution was based on mitigation measures implemented
by the operators: replacing standard insulators with polymeric
insulators and insulator washing. This could be useful for
planning new lines and assessing reliability but it is void for
correlation analysis since one set of data depends on the other.
F. Lesser factors
The previous five factors represent 69% of all causes and
75% if one discards events with unknown causes. There are
other lesser effects associated with human mishaps that are
harder to track due to their rarity.
Next to these, there are other environmental factors that do
not cause grid events but that could contribute as earlier causes

The simplest representation is supported on a Geographical

Information System; GoogleEarth is used for demonstration
purposes.
IV.

INVESTIGATING THE NEXUS OF CAUSE

This section introduces the approaches followed to handle

the wealth of data stored according to the previous section. As
a work in progress, different approaches have been tried with
intensive and systematic number crunching, to seek time and
space correlations between environmental factors, inspection or
maintenance findings and, where available, grid events as
recorded by electrical dispatch systems.
To illustrate the process, let us assume a list of 7 issues was
registered on a given region during the year as shown in Figure
4 that is divided in four quadrants: the top left shows the space
distribution in XY above and the time distribution along the
month calendar below. There are two counts of grey star
issue and one count of each other 5 issues. All other quadrants
show the space and time distributions of three hypothetical
environmental factors (examples: leisure activities, pollution,
moisture on the ground) in a similar manner. In most cases,
only average or typical values are available but in cases such as
lightning there is a space chart time for each year.
The magnitude of the phenomena changes continuously but
for simplicity the spatial values were quantized in the graph as
1 (lighter shade), 2 (medium) and 3 (darker shade). The
variation along the year is continuous from 0 to 3 as well, and
it can be assumed that it affects the whole region uniformly.
Mapping the issues in the time space charts as shown in
establishes how strong the environmental factors were
where and when each issue occurred. This is shown in
quadrants of Figure 5 where the horizontal axis depicts
magnitude in the space chart and the vertical axis depicts
magnitude at that instant.
Figure 4

For example, consider the diamond issue that occurred in

late May-early June. Checking it for the blue factor (top
right quadrant) shows that amplitude at that location (space) is
near the peak but at that particular season (time) this factor is
close to zero. The correlation is depicted accordingly in the top
right quadrant of Figure 5: above 2 for space and near 0 for time.
Checking it for the pink factor (bottom left quadrant) shows
spatial correlation near 1 and time correlation near the peak.
Finally, checking it for the yellow factor (bottom right)
shows medium spatial correlation and time correlation close to
zero. Other factors ought to explain the diamond issue.
The triangle issue occurred at a location where the blue
factor is at peak but this factor ebbs at the end of September.
Correlating with the pink factor shows a low value in space
and a high value at that month. Again, blue and pink are
unlikely causes for the triangle issue. On the contrary,
correlation is at peak at that location and at that month for the
yellow factor. It seems likely that the yellow factor could
cause the triangle issue.
The two star issues seem to correlate high with the
yellow factor as well: near 3 in space and between 2 and 3 in
time. The correlation with pink is also fair: near the peak in
space and above 2 in time. So, there are two possible
explanations for the same issues, they could act separately or as
a combination of two.
Combining the representations of all issues for the three
factors on a common chart highlights the likely correlations
(top left of Figure 5 with dark background) one can summarize
that values on the top-right vertex denote likely causes for the
issues found on the field, viable candidates lie around that
vertex and the remaining pairs issue-factor do not match.
V.
Figure 4 - Space-time correlation with field findings

FIELD EXAMPLES

A. Storks and broken insulators

The possibility of correlation between environmental
factors and equipment failure was recently explored on a given
double circuit OHL with 123 spans. This line has been
renovated in the last decade, with glass insulators fitted in all
its extension.

Figure 6 - Anti-nesting device, nest with storks and empty nest support
Figure 5 - space-time correlation charts

Anti-nesting devices were added above insulator chains and

on locations where birds or their droppings could affect energy
transmission and nest supports were added at safe locations to

Figure 7- Correlation of stork related elements with broken insulators

accommodate the stork population, (Figure 6). Storks prefer to

remain on top of towers but if food is abundant and
competition with other storks is strong, some stork pairs will
nest on lower supports or inside the steel lattice.
After visual inspection, 13 insulators were found broken.
The spatial distribution of broken insulators and nests along the
OHL is depicted in Figure 7. The rows have the following
meaning from top to bottom: number of broken insulators,
presence of nests (regardless of number); presence of nest
supports; presence of anti-nesting devices. The last row shows
tower numbers; about half of the towers in the blank areas were
removed for the sake of clarity, thus compressing the chart).
The chart shows that although only 20 towers out of 122
were enhanced to accommodate storks, they represent half the
towers affected with broken insulators and the most severe
ones too: one tower with two insulator discs and another with
three insulator discs lost. Moreover, the grid event analysis for
this line shows 14 events in the past decade, all attributed to
storks.
B. Trees and LiDAR maintenance inspection
Direct contact with trees triggered 17 events on the REN
event sample and they show interesting time patterns. First of
all, such events often occur in bursts during short time lapses
(less than 10 minutes) and in one installation as tentative
reclosings try to restore energy after an initial tripping. All 17
events occurred on 9 days spread across a ten year interval,
affecting only one circuit each day.
Table I shows the monthly distribution of events. About
two thirds of the events occur during late winter and spring
which is consistent with tree growth pattern. There is a
secondary peak of occurrences in October which is
consistent with thunderstorms and high intensity winds that
arrive along with the first rain of Fall.
Table II shows the annual distribution of events with the
month of occurrences as secondary data. Since the sixth year,
there has only been one burst of events caused by trees and this
is consistent with a new method of OHL inspection that
incorporates LiDAR measurements in routine inspections [7]
initiated that year.
MONTHLY DISTRIBUTION OF TREE EVENTS

TABLE I.
J
0

TABLE II.

ANNUAL DISTRIBUTION OF TREE EVENTS

10

4
3

Mar
Jul

Feb
Jun

Apr

May
Oct

May

Oct

VI.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

A. Long term spatial-time correlation analysis

Long term spatial-time correlation is a powerful tool to
guide engineers into discovering surprising coincidences or
connections between apparently disparate factors. Who would
figure out a connection between storks and insulators? After
all, the platforms and anti-nesting devices were installed to
decouple storks form electricity distribution.
As grid issues become rarer, clients are happier but
engineers must learn ever more from a diminishing set of
events. Lessons learned yesterday after recurring faults and
replacements must be learned through preventive maintenance
while keeping the power on.
The rarity of events turns most associations into educated
guesses, at best, and sometimes the cause-effect sequence of
events is difficult to establish. For instance, if one tried to
associate broken insulators with storks, it would be necessary
to walk the line in the wake of an incident attributed to the
storks to find evidence of the changes in the line: a dead bird
and a shattered insulator. As inspections occur once a year and
grid events per line have similar frequencies, it is all but
impossible to establish a proof. It may happen that a higher
concentration of storks at those locations is due to an
underlying environmental factor that also affects insulators.
Correlation does not imply cause and consequence. In a
nutshell, prudence, likelihood and probabilistic assertions are
necessary to avoid jumping into the wrong conclusions.
B. Clarification of the causal link; concurrent causes
Correlation has been used informally as implicit knowledge
and experience. But correlation has its limits and technology
does not save people from its pitfalls. In the hypothetical
example of Section IV, two factors could be attributed to a
given issue and one can not wait for years until a population of
occurrences help to sort out the most likely candidate. What
often occurs is that one plausible match is considered to be the
right match and this is not necessarily true. However, it is rarer
to enquire on the opposite sense: if an instance of factor F is the
cause of event E, why a new instance of F did not produce a
similar event? Are there concurrent factors that are necessary to
trigger the event E?
This opens the door to multiple-factor correlation, a more
complex challenge. Maintenance engineers are familiar with
some concurrent causes: fog with moisture and pollution, high
temperature with forest fires, farming activities with leaning
towers.
Other concurrent factors are less evident: French regulation
for minimum ground clearance states that medium voltage lines
should be no lower than 1,5m above the highest vehicle that

might pass under the conductors. Since sag grows with plastic
elongation during an expected service life of 30 years [8] and
farming machines have become bigger during the last 30 years,
it comes as little surprise that some OHL should require
renovation with higher poles.
C. Closing remarks
Most of the events recorded in the long time series studied
related to the Portuguese transmission grid were solved without
failing to supply energy to the clients. This should be true in
the majority of sub-transmission and distribution grids as well.
Most events above low voltage grids are perceived by the end
client as mild voltage sags or are not detected at all. This high
quality is due to N-1 reliability, multiple feeding to distribution
substations, meshed medium voltage lines with automated
sectionalisers, all commanded from sophisticated SCADA
systems that perform sub-second maneuvers. This comes as a
direct cost in OHL assets with a relatively low intensity of use
(one of the side benefits is that actual service lives are longer
than the initial estimates) and as an indirect cost on line
corridors, clearance safeguards, constraints on human activities
and wildlife.
The scenario is changing as permits to new corridors or to
expand existing ones take years to approve; looking for the best
way to answer these challenges is the purpose behind the
current work. This paper presents more questions than answers
while the authors expect that the insightful correlation and data
analysis will provide a fair share of answers (along with new
questions). These answers should contribute to improving the
coexistence of OHL and high-quality environmental standards.
Most regulations address environment constraints in terms
of what is allowed and forbidden around OHL and set
thresholds for acceptable detrimental effects, whether it is
electromagnetic fields or distances from lines to heritage sites.
Establishing ever more sever environmental constraints while
satisfying increasing demands for quantity, reliability and
affordability of electricity will raise stronger rebuttals from all
stakeholders.
Field evidence suggests that nuances, local analysis and
modulations over a base regulation may yield good results,
such as the 1968 clearance regulation that widens clearances at
mid-spans although no rule could cope with rare events such as
the one described in Section V, subsection B. Such cases may
call for a new design of OHL towers, planting OHL-friendly
vegetation, or the cork oak and butterfly corridor strategies
mentioned in Section II.
The authors believe that harmonious relationships between
power system operators, neighbours of OHL and wildlife can
be maintained and improved if engineers involved in the OHL
life cycle learn how to model and incorporate all stakeholders
needs into the process and mutual confidence can be
established between the parties. Rich field data from various

sources collected in long time-spatial series, analyzed with

thorough, verifiable methods are essential to nurture such
confidence.
D. Further research
This work is part of a long term effort to optimize the life
cycle of OHL in a context of scarcity of new corridors and the
need to exploit existing assets closer to their safety boundaries.
This involves other research activities as criticality indices [1],
healthy indices and condition evaluation such as in [9], unified
status evaluation for reliability and risk analysis of OHL.
Related to these activities, the authors are also involved in
signal processing to automate inspections later validated by a
human expert. Current efforts focus on automated classification
of LiDAR data for clearance measurements and automated
detection of stork nests from image data.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Unless otherwise stated, operation data about the
Portuguese transmission grid was provided by Rede Elctrica
Nacional, S.A. within the framework of R&D project LIONS.
Third-party environmental data was accessed through REN
under the same scope.
Inspection data on Portuguese OHL was provided by
Labelec, a subsidiary of Electricidade de Portugal (EDP)
specialized in services related to quality of energy.
The authors acknowledge both companies contributions.
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