Seeing the Signs: How Continuous Monitoring of Utility Poles Boosts Grid Reliability

Utility poles are a foundational element of the electric grid, but their structural integrity can degrade over time due to decay, weather, unbalanced loading, and other stressors. Visible signs of distress such as leaning poles, cracked crossarms, or insect damage often signal deeper structural issues that, if unaddressed, can lead to failure.

Inspection Cycles and Service Life

Most utilities conduct intrusive inspections, such as sounding and boring, cyclically every several years, often as long as 10-years between cycles (1,2). These inspections provide critical insight into the structural health of poles but occur infrequently relative to a pole’s life expectancy.

A well-maintained wood pole can last 50–70 years, and in some cases much longer. Without remedial treatment, the average lifespan is closer to 45 years, while consistent inspection and treatment programs can extend service life up to 96 years (1).

This means a pole expected to last 60 years may only receive six intrusive inspections across its entire service life. Between those cycles, conditions that lead to failure often emerge gradually, and become visible long before the next intrusive test would detect them.

The Reliability Impact

Pole and crossarm failures are a significant driver of outages, especially under storm and high-wind conditions. While precise percentages vary by utility, structural failures consistently appear in outage reports as a leading contributor to service interruptions.

Because failure points can develop gradually in the years between intrusive inspections, relying solely on cadence-based testing creates blind spots.

Visual Deterioration Indicators as Early Warnings

Many pole and asset conditions are detectable through recurring visual inspection, including:

• Leaning poles, often linked to groundline rot or soil instability
• Cracks and splits in wood structures
• Broken or deteriorating crossarms
• Insect boring holes
• Open cutouts or damaged hardware
• Vegetation encroachment

The Case for Continuous Visual Monitoring

Traditional inspection cycles leave large gaps in visibility, especially when the physical poles may only be inspected once every 10 years. Even utilities with more aggressive schedules still leave multi-year gaps between comprehensive inspections. For example, Duke Energy inspects approximately 20 percent of its 4.3 million poles annually, meaning each pole is reviewed about once every five years (3).

To address this visibility gap, utilities are increasingly turning to continuous, autonomous visual monitoring technologies. By pairing vehicle-mounted cameras with AI-based analytics, utilities can enhance their awareness of field conditions in near real time. This enables them to identify poles showing early signs of failure and to prioritize them for out-of-cycle, more intrusive evaluation. The result is a smarter inspection workflow that improves crew efficiency, reduces unplanned outages, and lowers emergency response costs.

Integrating Continuous Monitoring with Existing Programs

Continuously refreshing visual inspections do not replace more intrusive testing methods. Instead, they complement existing programs by providing ongoing situational awareness between cycles.

• Intrusive inspections deliver deep structural insights every 5–10 years.
• Visual inspections with AI provide real-time visibility to surface developing defects.

Together, these approaches allow utilities to:

• Prioritize poles for out-of-cycle inspections based on visible risk factors
• Deploy field crews more efficiently
• Reduce emergency response costs
• Strengthen grid reliability in both storm and blue-sky conditions

Resilience That Matters: Strengthening the Grid for Every Day and Every Storm

A stronger, more resilient grid benefits everyone—not just utilities managing costs, but the communities that rely on safe, uninterrupted power. By integrating ongoing, autonomous visual monitoring with traditional inspection programs, utilities can identify and address structural risks before they turn into failures. This proactive approach not only reduces the likelihood of outages during severe weather, but also ensures day-to-day reliability. Whether it's a severe summer storm or just a routine case of the Mondays, enhancing situational intelligence every day leads to a healthier grid with greater safety, fewer disruptions, and more peace of mind for the people and neighborhoods that count on it.

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References

1. Colorado Springs Utilities. Utility Pole Inspections.
2. Western Wood Preservers Institute. (n.d.). Technical Bulletin: Service Life of Wood Utility Poles.
3. Crumpler, C. (2018, February 8). Power to the neighborhood? Not with rotting utility poles. Axios Charlotte.