“We are moving towards a future where these drones will fly themselves across the countryside,” said McKenna. “But the long-term future of this software is that it will take people everywhere.”
With the UK’s National Grid, the operator of the country’s energy supply, the relationship has become more concrete, after the organization pledged funding to accelerate technology development. by Sees.ai. The first goal of the partnership is to demonstrate that the system can be used to better maintain the grid’s 21,900 steel poles.
The network needs to be constantly tuned to maintain reliability, and regular testing is important. National Grid boasts 99.99% reliability: something it wants to improve by identifying critical issues before they happen. In the humid UK climate, the risk of corrosion is high, which is difficult to prevent once it has started. Mounts need to be replaced when rust has affected their structural integrity, so early detection saves costs in the long run.
National Grid spends around £16 million a year painting the pylons and it has predicted a cost of £35 million over the next five years to replace the corroded steel. Taking into account the high cost of R&D, Sees.ai’s drone system isn’t necessarily cheaper than other inspection methods, but National Grid predicts it will allow for frequent and timely data collection. more time, thus resulting in cost savings through a more targeted asset alternative. If the trials are successful, National Grid predicts more than £1 million in savings for UK consumers by 2031.
But until cost-effective drones are deployed on a large scale, the only option is to use helicopters. A helicopter can check 16 pylons per hour at a cost of £2,000 per hour, but flying a VLOS drone is not much better as it is labor intensive and slow to the side pilot. below. On a clear day, VLOS drones can inspect no more than 10 pylons. Mark Simmons, National Grid’s director of health monitoring, said: “It’s the human factor that is causing the problems.
Sees.ai is not alone in solving this problem, the systems that many other companies rely on use GPS and compasses for positioning. The problem is that these technologies are prone to failure, especially when near steel or strong electromagnetic fields, which occur around high voltage power lines. Relying on available data can also be precarious because the world is always changing.
According to David Benowitz, head of research at research platform Drone Analyst, GPS technology is not always accurate, especially when used to measure altitude or in rural areas with poor satellite coverage. . Because there is always a “bubble of doubt,” he says, there’s a higher risk of collisions in busy spaces. With more vulnerabilities comes more risk.
Therefore, the only way to deploy these technologies is to limit the risk in other ways, such as flying simpler flights, further away from potential collisions. But with each limit placed, “the applicability and scalability of the solution decreases,” says Benowitz. If we want to replace manned helicopters, we need to develop a solution “without these limitations”, which can safely perform a detailed overview and inspection of the above assets. much of the grid, not just the remote parts.
For this to happen, more powerful and reliable technologies are needed: Each operating system needs multiple layers of security. “For us to be able to fly close enough to the pylons to get the best data, we need more intelligence than GPS,” says Hjamlmarsson. But it also takes a shift between regulators like the FAA and CAA to make space for these more advanced systems to be developed and tested appropriately so they can be proven safe. “It’s the chicken or the egg scenario,” says Benowitz. “These systems are unremarkable, so there is no problem deploying them at scale and cost, but regulations need to be updated.”
