“We are heading for a future where these drones fly around the countryside,” says McKenna. “But the long-term future of this software is to make people fly around.”
The relationship with the National Grid, which operates the UK’s energy supply, became more concrete after the organization invested money to accelerate the development of Sees.ai’s technology. The first goal of the partnership is to prove that the system can be used to better maintain the 21,900 towers on the grid.
The network needs to be constantly tuned to maintain reliability, and regular inspections are important. National Grid boasts 99.99% reliability. This is something we want to improve by identifying a serious problem long before the outage occurs. In the wet climate of the UK, the risk of corrosion is high and it is difficult to stop once corrosion begins. Early detection saves costs in the long run, as the pylon needs to be replaced if rust affects the integrity of the structure.
National Grid spends about £ 16 million annually on painting pylon and estimates that replacing corroded steel will cost £ 35 million over the next five years. Given the high cost of R & D, Sees.ai’s drone system is not necessarily cheaper than other inspection methods, but National Grid allows for more frequent and timely data capture and more. We expect to save money through targeted assets. Replacement. If the trial is successful, National Grid expects UK consumers to save over £ 1m by 2031.
However, until cost-effective drones are deployed on a large scale, the only option is to use a helicopter. A helicopter costs £ 2,000 an hour and can inspect 16 pylon every hour, but the flight of a VLOS drone isn’t that good because it’s tedious and slow for the pilot below. On sunny days, the VLOS drone team can only inspect 10 pylon. “It’s the human element that causes the problem,” says Mark Simmons, National Grid’s Condition Monitoring Manager.
Sees.ai isn’t the only one addressing this issue, but the systems that many other companies rely on use GPS and compasses for positioning. The problem is that these technologies are vulnerable to failure. This is especially true if you are near steel or strong electromagnetic fields that occur around high voltage power lines. As the world is constantly changing, relying on existing data can also be unstable.
GPS technology is not always accurate, especially when used in rural areas where altitude measurements and satellite coverage are inadequate, according to David Benowitz, head of research for research platform Drone Analyst. He says that “bubbles of doubt” are always present, increasing the risk of collisions in crowded airspace. The more vulnerable you are, the more risk you have.
Therefore, the only way to deploy these technologies is to limit the risk in other ways, such as flying a simple flight far from the possibility of a collision. However, each limitation “reduces the applicability and scalability of the solution,” says Benowitz. If you are replacing a manned helicopter, you need to develop a “no of these restrictions” solution. This allows you to safely perform asset overviews and detailed inspections across most of the grid, not just remote locations.
To achieve this, we need more reliable and robust technology. Each operating system requires multiple layers of safety. “Flying near the pylon to get the best data requires more intelligence than GPS,” says Hjamlmarsson. However, changes are also needed between regulators such as FAA and CAA to develop and properly test these more sophisticated systems to create space that can be proven to be safe. “This is a chicken or the egg scenario,” says Benowitz. “These systems are not state-of-the-art, so it’s okay to deploy them on a large scale and at a high cost, but we need to keep the regulations up-to-date.”