The NERC Board of Trustees Compliance Committee has reviewed and accepted the Vegetation-Related Transmission Outage Fourth Quarter 2009 Report.

Vegetation-related transmission outages that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2009 are being reported in accordance with standard FAC-003-1.

The standard requires each outage to be categorized as one of the following:

•  Category 1 - Grow-ins: Outages caused by vegetation growing into lines from vegetation inside and/or outside of the ROW
•  Category 2 - Fall-ins: Outages caused by vegetation falling into lines from inside the ROW
•  Category 3 - Fall-ins: Outages caused by vegetation falling into lines from outside the ROW

All Category 1 and 2 outages are considered to be violations of NERC standard FAC-003-1, with corresponding levels of noncompliance defined in the standard.

The reporting of these violations is handled separately as part of the NERC performance reporting process. Category 3 outages are not considered to be violations of NERC standard FAC-003-1.

The report also includes summary of vegetation-related transmission outages for the period 2004-2009.

Category 1 – Grow-In Vegetation Related Outages of 230 kV and Higher Transmission by Voltage Class.