"We can now finish in a morning what used to take us 1 or 2 days" — A case study on drones for power grid inspection

Rui'an, a coast city in China's Zhejiang Province, sits on a hilly area of 1,350 km2 that borders the Pacific Ocean. Mountains and hills account for a large percentage of the city with State Grid's transmission towers scattered among them.

"We used to use a consumer drone to patrol transmission lines for routine maintenance, but oftentimes the drone's battery died before reaching the distance we wanted it to cover. We also had these transmission towers that stood behind a hilltop or down in a valley. They were not far away from us if you drew a straight line connecting us on a map, but the data link's stability was physically threatened by the hills and mountains. Thus, to not lose the drone and to get a better picture of the power grid,?we had to drive to the next launch point. Inspecting a tower may take only a few minutes, but the driving hours," said a State Grid employee.

"You can predict everything but the weather in the mountains. You may think you'd have a sunny day ahead when you leave for work in the morning, but it gets foggy or windy in the afternoon. In that case, you have to call it a day as the weather is not mission-friendly."?

"We came to know GDU at a demo show and were impressed by S400E. That 1K thermal camera stole our hearts as it had a resolution 4 times higher than what we used to have."?

"Signal relay helped us a lot in valley missions, where a drone has to descend to a valley behind a hilltop that affects the data link. We use two drones in this case — one that goes down to the valley for the inspection and the other one hovers over the hilltop to relay signals between the remote controller and the mission drone. With this solution, we can spend more of our time on the inspection rather than the driving.?We can now finish in a morning what used to take us 1 or 2 days."

For industrial solutions, contact GDU at [email protected].