2025 System Reliability Actions and Investments

All figures are year-end projections.

Animal Guards

8,100+
Animal Guards
Installed/Upgraded

Animal guards enhance reliability by lowering the chance of wildlife-related faults. This significantly reduces outage risks, especially at locations prone to wildlife interference.

1,200+
Miles of Right-of-Way
Cleared

Clearing vegetation from rights-of-way prevents trees, limbs and branches from contacting power lines and causing outages.

ROW
Hazard Trees

~7,500
Hazard Trees Removed

Removing trees that pose a hazard improves reliability by preventing them from contacting poles, lines and other infrastructure.

40,000
Drone Inspections

Through drone inspections, REC teams can spot issues early instead of waiting for something to break. Drone inspections have identified 12,000 improvements in 2025.

Drone
Poles

5,550
Poles Replaced

Regularly replacing poles helps to address increased loading and evolving infrastructure. It also contributes significantly to system-wide reliability and resiliency.

27,400
Ground and
Underground Inspections

These inspections catch issues that drones cannot, including loose hardware or signs of equipment wear.

Underground

REC STORIES

REC Recognized for Strong Customer Satisfaction

Thursday | September 26, 2024
REC members have spoken, and as a result the Cooperative and its employees earned both a 2023 and a 2024 Customer Satisfaction Award from the American...
Over the summer, REC’s Vegetation Management team supported the Virginia State Arboretum’s initiative to pollinate American chestnut trees at Blandy E...

REC Warns of In-Person Impersonation Scams

Friday | September 20, 2024
REC has seen an increase in potential in-person scams in the southeast portion of its service area.