08/26/2026
Power grids built in the early 1900s are still buried under our streets today, and inspecting them has barely changed until recently. A fault meant pulling incomplete drawings, sending crews to climb poles and walk miles of cable, and in the worst cases, draining a vault just to see inside it.
Underwater sections raise the stakes even further. Anchors, trawling, storm scour, and marine growth all threaten subsea cable, and the traditional fix has been sending down a dive team, an approach that's slow, expensive, and puts people at risk in unpredictable conditions.
Remote inspection changes the equation. A submersible ROV can survey a flooded vault with imaging sonar even at zero visibility, no pumping required. A pipe crawler can travel buried lines without ever breaking ground. Add 3D laser scanning, stereoscopic cameras, and ultrasonic thickness gauges, and operators get asset data precise enough to plan maintenance schedules instead of reacting to failures, all without a technician ever entering a confined space or the water.
As the grid modernizes, inspection has to keep pace. Read the full breakdown of how we're helping utilities get there in our article. Link in the comments.
