Wow That's Cool - Drones Will One Day Run Power Grids!
Drones in the power industry
Did you know that drones could be used on a large scale to oversee and maintain public electrical grids?
Some software companies that focus on autonomous technology are consolidating their efforts to make the inspection process of electrical grids much faster and safer while being just as efficient. Other companies from different parts of the world (Percepto from Israel, Agder Energi Nett from Norway, Airpelago from Sweden, etc.) are spearheading similar efforts to design software and algorithms that take in information from the power grids and process them in order to detect any defects in the structures.
How the theorized power grid inspection process works is that the drones would be deployed as commissioned by the electric companies that maintain the power grid. Then, those same drones would take in the physical environment and map out each pylon and wire and save it on a database for future inspections. For future inspections, the drones will soon be able to detect any signs of corrosion and other signs of deterioration so that maintenance can be able to fix the problem without having to go to each pylon individually (which is dangerous) or resort to helicopter inspections (which is costly and highly polluting).
A drone flying across pylons inspecting the quality of each one
Although strides have already been made regarding the actual design and implementation of these types of drones, problems still remain; such as GPS positioning accuracy, drone integrity against electromagnetic fields, constantly changing data, government regulation, etc.
Until these drones are able to be deployed on a large scale, innovative companies continue to improve on their methods so that they will become a favorable inspection option in the future.