08/18/2020
Hundreds of thousands of transmission towers span
the U.S., with greater than 3,200 electric utilities adding more each year to the ever-expanding American grid.
Using drones in transmission & distribution today both opens up new possibilities and replaces existing work. Without drones, inspections are typically completed manually, using climbing, bucket trucks, long-range photography; or helicopter. Clearly, manual inspections involving climbing or using buckets introduce hazards that are avoided with drones. Ground-based data collection typically lacks the detail and flexibility that a drone can provide. Helicopters can capture data quickly and over large areas of land, but they are expensive, can’t operate near residential areas, and often miss finer defects (missing cotter pins, for example).
While we expect the benefits and use cases for drones to expand further in the future, the technology available for use right now, today, already offers significant benefits.
