Utilities
How can UAV’s help the utilities industry?
UAV’s have been used in utilities for several years and only recently, these programs started to scale into larger fleets. The utility industry is made up of three parts: generation, transmission, and distribution. The transmission sector has seen the fastest adoption in UAV technology, which is used for inspecting several thousand miles of electrical cabling. Most transmission lines are in remote areas or hard to reach places such as a mountainous area, over water, or in heavy forestry. This makes traditional inspection methods more complicated and much more expensive when trying to reach remote areas. This is where using a UAV is advantageous, taking as little as 20 minutes for a tower inspection compared to the traditional method of 4-8 hours. The time required to complete an inspection also makes economical sense.
The utility industry uses UAV technology for infrastructure inspection, asset management, lifting cables, and boiler room inspections.
Which UAV should you use?
We’ll go over the best UAV’s to use depending on key use cases.
For Infrastructure inspection the Mavic 2 Enterprise, Phantom 4 Pro, M200 series, or M300 RTK would be good options.
Asset management could utilize the M200 series or the Phantom 4 Pro. It’s important to take advantage of a high megapixel sensor when capturing data, this will allow the user to apply more advanced algorithms for post analysis. With the data set it is possible to generate an orthomosaic or 3D model with third party software or DJI Terra.
A larger UAV would be required for lifting cables, this is where the M600 series would be a great option. This is a very unique use case we have seen among utility companies.
Finally, the Mavic 2 Enterprise series would be a great option for inspecting boiler rooms which are typically in GPS denied environments.
For a USA made vehicle option, the Astro A7R4 with a 50mm lens is a great option to leverage the 61MP sensor to capture detailed information.