Met-Ed owner First Energy recently completed its annual inspection of the company’s largest transmission lines in Lebanon County.
According to a First Energy spokesperson, the review was completed earlier this month by the company’s transmission forestry managers, who use specialized radar equipment on geo-digital helicopters to precisely determine the distance of all trees along the edges of the transmission line corridors to ensure none are too close to the conductor.
Transmission lines carrying 230,000 volts were the focus of this exercise.
“Trees coming into contact with power lines are a leading cause of outages on our lower-voltage distribution and subtransmission lines,” said First Energy spokesperson Todd Meyers in an email to LebTown. “We certainly don’t want trees to knock out our largest transmission lines that feed those distribution networks for our Met-Ed customers.”
Proactive vegetation management and aerial inspections are used by the company to help prevent potentially major outages. According to Meyers, if trees are found to be leaning towards a transmission line or otherwise growing too close, grounds crews are brought in to either trim or remove the trees, depending on the circumstances.
Met-Ed has approximately 59,000 customers in Lebanon County. Met-Ed is one of several companies operated by First Energy in Pennsylvania.