Cemig harnesses georeferencing for tree prunings
Image: Cemig
Brazilian utility Cemig reports having carried out 330,000 tree prunings in urban and rural areas since the start of 2024, attributing thanks to the use of georeferencing software.
Currently, Cemig records about 750,000 trees in the 774 municipalities in its concession area, of which about 94% have received some type of preventive pruning to avoid accidents and outages.
Cemig uses two management softwares with imagery developed by the company Concert Technologies and Street Service created internally.
“Through the programme, we can see which trees are close to the networks and, according to the average growth of the species, the tool signals which of them need pruning,” explains Cemig’s Electric System technician, Fleives de Freitas.
“From there, we activate a team to evaluate the case and, if confirmed, we intervene. From the site, the technician can also photograph the result and attach the image to the history of that tree in the software. Everything online, without any paper, which is very good for the teams, especially those who work in rural areas.”
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Cemig reports that the programmes, which have been running for the past two years, have streamlined the work of the teams and improved the inspection and audit processes.
On average, about 1,000 prunings are carried out per day in the state, with about 150 employees dedicated exclusively to this service, a number that can increase during rainy periods.
Typically a single team can do 40 prunings in a day.
In all, Cemig has invested about R$136 million (US$23 million) in the work of pruning species in urban centres and cleaning strips in rural areas in Minas Gerais, the state where the company is headquartered.
In the first eight months of this year, Cemig invested R$53 million (US$9 million) in tree pruning within the cities.
In strip cleaning, with pruning of species near transmission and distribution lines in rural areas, the investments were R$83 million (US$14 million) for the inspection of 31,400 km of lines.
For scale, the state of Minas Gerais is similar in size to the territory of France.
