Electric Light & Power - January/February 2016

Any remote sensing technology, whether a drone or something yet to be invented, is simply a tool to assist linemen and engineers. If, for instance, an engineer needs to identify the serial number of a part located high on a transmission tower, a drone can spare a crew the time and cost of climbing an additional structure.

OSHA’s tall-tower climbing regulations now require that teams are capable of recovering a fallen climber on site, so crews have grown from two people to three. That spells greater costs and coordination. Drones make it possible to spare the crew unnecessary work and identify the correct tower or part before a climb begins. Simply put, drones extend a utility’s reach.

Putting Drones Into Practice

AEP and Con Edison are two utilities among others that have flown UAS demos to inspect their infrastructure. For both utilities, drones allow them to obtain reliable, routine and high-quality information about their assets. Managers at these utilities say drones enable preventative maintenance programs as well as reduce time and costs for emergency maintenance.

Con Edison typically sends its crews to inspect towers and feeders looking for signs of wear or damage on cotter keys, static shoes and other equipment that can lead to outages.

Top-level inspections require crews to climb the towers. Second-level inspections rely on ground crews making use of spotting scopes. Con Edison sees drones as a safe way to increase the inspection rate of towers and capture detail that ground crews could never see, and enhance operation and maintenance excellence. For AEP and Con Edison, the drones are a way to inspect as-built structures and document a baseline for changes that will occur to the infrastructure and landscape around the towers.

A drone can in a few minutes of flying time pinpoint a faulty
device. And, while a crew must often climb a tower to make a repair,
a drone program minimizes the amount of climbing that crews must
do for inspection. According to Con Edison, enhanced safety and
efficiency are good reasons to get a
drone program off the ground.
Before a utility’s first drone
takes flight, managers should
decide what kind (and amount)
of data they want to collect,
so their investment leads to
actionable data that will help
them maintain and improve their
infrastructure. For example, Con
Edison has collected hundreds of
megabytes of data on the condition
of individual towers. As this data
begins pouring in, managers need a plan
for tapping and securing this largely visual
information.

The Three Pillars of a Successful Drone Program

Before investing in a drone program, utility managers must understand the government regulations, operations and technology.

Understanding Government Regulations

The FAA requires commercial drone operators to have a Section 333 exemption to fly a drone. Even with the exemption, the FAA limits what utilities, or any other commercial operator, can do with drones. For example, current FAA regulations state that commercial operators cannot fly over a populated area. Therefore, inspecting downed distribution lines or laterals after an outage is not yet possible. In addition, part of Section 333 requires operators to produce flight logs, safety checks, training reports and a catalogue of maintenance on their drones.

Piloting a Drone

In spite of the name UAS, an unmanned drone requires a pilot. The pilot must have at least 20 hours of flying time and hold a sport pilot license. The pilot must know how to keep a drone running next to high power lines for up to 30 minutes, as he and a team manage variable wind conditions and collect actionable data. An experienced drone pilot must fastidiously adhere to a preflight checklist and run through a rehearsal prior to an actual inspection of a tower.