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

Move Over: Make Room for Roadside Crews

Wednesday | April 13, 2022
When the power goes out, so do REC's line crews. Lineworkers are the first to respond after an outage occurs, and they work tirelessly to restore powe...

REC Brightens the Community

Saturday | April 9, 2022
Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC) attended the Madison Free Clinic’s first Touch-a-Truck event on Saturday, April 9.
Nationwide, there are approximately 120,000 electric lineworkers. At REC, about 130 lineworkers are responsible for keeping power flowing 24/7, 365 da...