State Grid Huangshi Power Supply Company: contributing to the solution of wildfire to realize all win of government, enterprises and famers

Company profile
 
State Grid Huangshi Power Supply Company, a subsidiary of State Grid Hubei Electric Power Company, undertakes the task of supplying power to the five districts and two counties in Huangshi, covering a power supply area of 4,583 square kilometers and supplying power to 2.68 million people coming from 1.001 million households. Huangshi Grid is the hub of power grids in southeast of Hubei province, connecting Wuhan in the west, Huanggang in the north and Jiangxi in the east.
 
Challenges
 
Most of the power transmission lines in Huangshi are in hilly areas, where trees and grass are thick, and is wildfire-prone, which poses a huge threat to the safe operation of transmission lines. This not only destroys vegetation in the area and contaminates air, but also causes a threat to the life and property of local people. Besides, it's hard to identify a responsible subject for wildfire outbreak. As a result, the wildfire accidents and the caused losses bring a heavy economic burden and much pressure to the local government and forest departments. Therefore, how to transform the traditional low-efficient wildfire management mode of annual compensation and annual felling to a once for all high-efficient and long-term wildfire management way is a huge challenge to power supply companies.
 
Solutions
 
Analyze causes of wildfire under the power transmission lines through multilateral consultation.
 
After convening meetings with the government, villagers and forest departments, it is generally believed that there are two reasons. Objectively, the large quantity of forest trees and weeds along the transmission path is the direct cause for the frequent incidence of wildfire. The insufficient understanding of the hazards of wildfire under the transmission lines and the lack of coordinated governance also play a role.
 
Conduct investigation to clarify the expectations and advantages of each party in wildfire prevention and control.
 
Through ways of investigation and discussion, the desirable requirements and resource advantages of the government, agriculture and forest departments, village committee, villagers and power supply company in wildfire prevention and control are clarified, which lays a foundation of action for carrying out wildfire prevention and control jointly.
 
Enhance communication to form a joint action mechanism of anti-wildfire.
 
The company urged the municipal government of Huangshi to convene a special session, during which various parties including the forest departments, township government, and village committee reached a consensus, a working team was formed, responsibilities and obligations were clarified, a working plan was made, and a normalized communication and cooperation mechanism was established so as to make sure the smooth advance and successful completion of wildfire prevention and control.
 
Promote advantageous cooperation to maximize benefits of all parties.
 
The power supply company made A Detailed List of Overhead Transmission Line Areas Where Wildfires Tend to Break out and An Overhead Transmission Line Wildfire Distribution Map in Huangshi, summarized and printed information of wildfire under the power transmission lines to the government, forest bureaus, and villagers timely. The company also cut down trees under the transmission lines after gaining the permission of the villagers and cultivated new land to turn waste land into arable land. It made use of professional advantages of the forest departments to analyze the hazard rating of forest fires, selected low marketable trees of lower fire hazard level and adaptable to local geographical conditions and climate characteristics to subsidize villagers, and turned compensation for felling young crops to supportive compensation of planting marketable corps. Based on the township committee's advantage in information, it investigated human factors of fire accidents and cautioned and educated people precisely. What's more, it launched anti-wildfire campaign in an all-around manner to improve people's awareness of wildfire prevention and control, and shared information with the media timely to publicize its enterprise brand image.
 
The government convened joint meeting for wildfire hazards rectification to coordinate and solve problems arising in implementing projects, to urge all functional departments to participate in comprehensive management of wildfire, and to advance the implementation of wildfire prevention and control in a rapid and efficient way. It started the pilot implementation of turning waste land into forest and subsidized villages at the criterion of 500 yuan per mu so as to improve the initiative of mass villagers in cultivating land and planting low marketable crops. Besides, it strengthened information exchange with the media actively to expand the influence of anti-wildfire campaign.
 
The forest departments issued The Implementation Opinions on Conducting Forest Fire Prevention for Power Facilities with departments in charge of power, convened economic forest planting instruction meetings with the power supply company, township government, and village representatives, published the five-year plan of arable land cultivation, established procurement specifications, forest plantation and compensation standards, and clarified responsibilities and obligations of each party. They also adjusted forest plantation distribution plan to combine the setting of forest fire barriers and the needs of wildfire prevention along power transmission routes and made real time adjustments based on the construction situations, thus eliminating the damage of wildfire to transmission lines from the origin, and the implementation of forest plantation was supervised and evaluated.
 
The township committee collected and summarized information, implemented requirements of the superior government, strengthened publicity, signed wildfire prevention liability statements with local villagers, supervised and urged villagers to execute plantation plans in a daily manner, organized the relevant parties to implement the indemnity, tried to be transparent, and organized villagers to put out fire and control damages when a fire breaks out.
 
Villagers signed agreements with the power supply company, played the role of transmission line protector, made feedbacks to the agriculture and forest departments and power supply company immediately, served as the frontier observers of wildfire, elected and formed an anti-wildfire supervision and implementation team, formed a supervision and restriction mechanism with village committee, advocated fair, open and transparent execution of all criteria, protected vegetation under the transmission lines, and gained benefits earned from crops growing in the power transmission line protection area.
 
The media, as an important communication media, made wildfire prevention and control advocacy reports timely and cultivated wildfire prevention awareness of the mass to achieve value delivery.
 
Strengthen supervision to ensure fairness and transparency of the process and result.
 
The company works together with the forest departments, township government, village committee, and villagers to implement information reporting system jointly, convenes coordinate meetings regularly to make sure the fairness and transparency of cost control, seed selection procedure, seedling procurement, plantation subsidy standards, performance evaluation and comprehensive effect assessment, to guarantee transparent operation and mutual supervision and to ensure procedural restriction and cycle improvement, thus laying a foundation for continuous implementation of wildfire prevention and control.
 
Achievements
 
Social Benefit
 
The public acknowledge to the government has improved. It avoids the government economic losses and bothers caused by wildfire, on the one hand, and provides economic support to impoverished villages on the other hand. 98% of the villagers expresses satisfaction and recognition to the government. The economic sources of villagers have improved. In total, the villagers have gained 50000 trees, including osmanthus fragrance seedlings, camellia oleifera, and fruit trees. Each peasant participating in the activity can gain an extra benefit of 5,000 yuan per year. With the growing of fruit trees, the long-term earning of villagers will be greater.
 
The local ecology has been improved. While guaranteeing the original green coverage ratio, the company has cultivated 840,000 square meters waste mountain under power transmission lines, which significantly improved the forest green structure in Huangshi, facilitated the sustainable development of forest ecology, and made a contribution to the construction of an ecological Huangshi.
 
Economic benefit
 
The safety benefit has been improved greatly. In total, 203 wildfire hazards were removed in accumulation and the occurrence of wildfire along the transmission route was reduced by 26 times, decreasing by 47.27%. Wildfire warnings of three and above three grade have reduced by 18 times, decreasing by 64.29%. The breaker trip caused by wildfire was zero for two consecutive years. The safe and smooth operation of power transmission lines was effectively guaranteed, which greatly improved and ensured the safe and reliable power utilization of millions of customers relying on cross district power grids in Huangshi and power grids in Hubei.
 
The operation and maintenance cost was lowered significantly. The first grade wildfire risks were basically eliminated. As a result, the company needs only to make monthly inspection tours along the 170-kilometer-long transmission lines, and the site monitoring is no longer needed during the peak season of wildfire. The labor intensity of the staff was greatly reduced, and workforce dispatched for wildfire prevention and control was reduced by 3750 person-time, saving emergency expenses by 550,000 yuan. The input in technological prevention was also reduced, saving nearly 1 million yuan. The compensation fees used for felling tree barriers is saved by nearly 1.1 million yuan, which has changed the passive situation of annual felling and annual compensation. The expenses used for wildfire prevention was reduced by 30%, saving over 6 million yuan directly in total.
 
Prospect
 
State Grid Huangshi Power Supply Company, starting from its long-standing problems in wildfire prevention and control, innovates in and solves the safety problems of its own transmission line and meets the demands of local governments, forestry departments, villages and village committees and villagers. Its measures and actions responds to the national policy of targeted poverty alleviation and the experience in helping both poor villages and villagers has been widely disseminated. At the same time, the model of wildfire prevention and control has also been promoted in Hubei Province. In the future, this model will continue to be optimized and improved, and efforts will be made to popularize and apply it in a wider area across the country so as to actively explore and lead the demonstration for the wildfire prevention and control.