Powerlines are an integral part of the country’s infrastructure which carries electricity for hundreds and thousands. This new technology of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for power line inspection is drawing increasing attention from the power industry. Traditionally the entire powerline grid would use human beings to do the inspection physically, this always gave results that were not of the quality required. The fact that it’s done by people using the naked eye for miles at a stretch there are always chances of missing out critical faults and breakage causing a huge delay in repairs and thereby monetary losses.
Issues in Power Lines
▪️Miles of cables and Pylons to inspect ▪️The terrain is very uneven making physical inspection very hard, risky and time-consuming ▪️High risk to human life ▪️Inspection by naked eye which is not the best of methods ▪️The maintenance costs are high as the time for inspection is high as well ▪️The turnaround time for replacements are high ▪️Hairline fractures in the insulators cannot be captured by the physical inspection most of the time
Benefits of Using Drones
- The drone can be deployed from anywhere
- On-site, conducts the flight tasks
- Acquires high definition pictures/videos from the airborne camera
- Live feed of visuals and thermal images to the inspection office for defect analysis
- Replacing tenuous human labor for power inspection
- Removing the old method of inspection (distant picturing using a telescope or walk close to the objects)
- Especially in graphically tough areas such as hilly and forest areas
- The ability to hover at a spot to inspect a spot
