An Innovative Tree Interference Mapping With LiDar for Overhead Lines Vulnerability Assessment in the Italian Power System

The contact of overhead lines with vegetation represents a significant cause of failures, also as secondary effects of weather events such as strong wind, ice/snow accumulation. Recent developments in LiDar (Light Detection and ranging) systems allow a frequently updated monitoring of the tree interference along the right of way of the line spans. LiDar data overcome the limits (e.g. low rate of updating) of land cover database CORINE, moreover they are useful to accurately characterize the vulnerability of overhead line spans to indirect effects of wind and wet snow acting on potentially interfering vegetation. This paper proposes an advanced probabilistic vulnerability model of overhead line failure due to inadvertent contact with vegetation, which integrates data from LiDar. The simulations performed on a representative set of Overhead Lines (OHLs) in the Italian Extra-High Voltage (EHV) and High Voltage (HV) transmission grid demonstrate how the advanced model provides failure return periods of the OHLs which are more in line with operational experience and less conservative than the ones obtained without using LiDar data.