SP Electricity North West to Trial Remotely Piloted Drones for Grid Fault Detection

SP Elec­tric­i­ty North West (SP ENW) is set to tri­al remote­ly pilot­ed drones sta­tioned at sub­sta­tions in the Lake Dis­trict as part of a project aimed at speed­ing up fault detec­tion and improv­ing mon­i­tor­ing of elec­tric­i­ty net­work assets.

The 12-month Project VOLT (Visu­al Over­head Line Track­ing) will deploy four “Drone-in-a-Box” sys­tems, allow­ing air­craft to be launched on demand and oper­at­ed beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS). The drones will be remote­ly pilot­ed from Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices’ Remote Oper­a­tions Cen­tre in Buck­ing­hamshire, more than 200 miles from the deploy­ment sites.

The project is being deliv­ered by SP ENW in part­ner­ship with Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices and eSmart Sys­tems, with fund­ing sup­port from Ofgem’s Net­work Inno­va­tion Allowance.

Fol­low­ing deploy­ment, imagery and oth­er data cap­tured by the drones will be streamed to SP ENW’s con­trol cen­tre. eSmart Sys­tems will process the infor­ma­tion using its Grid Vision soft­ware, with AI-based analy­sis intend­ed to help iden­ti­fy faults and assess the con­di­tion of net­work infra­struc­ture.

One appli­ca­tion will be rapid response fol­low­ing inci­dents such as severe storms, when phys­i­cal access to dam­aged sec­tions of the net­work can delay fault iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. The drones are intend­ed to pro­vide an alter­na­tive to ini­tial ground inspec­tions, allow­ing oper­a­tors to assess affect­ed infra­struc­ture remote­ly and sup­port deci­sions on where repair teams should be deployed.

The air­craft will also con­duct reg­u­lar asset con­di­tion mon­i­tor­ing along pow­er­lines close to the sub­sta­tions. Accord­ing to the project part­ners, the sys­tem will look for issues includ­ing loose con­nec­tions, dam­aged insu­la­tors, over­heat­ing, fail­ing hard­ware and veg­e­ta­tion encroach­ment.

The part­ners say con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing could pro­vide a longer-term record of asset con­di­tion, allow­ing changes to be tracked over time rather than rely­ing sole­ly on peri­od­ic inspec­tions. The sys­tem is also intend­ed to reduce the need for some heli­copter-based sur­veys.

Sky­ports will be respon­si­ble for reg­u­la­to­ry approvals, infra­struc­ture deploy­ment, remote pilot­ing and data cap­ture and trans­fer, while eSmart Sys­tems will han­dle data pro­cess­ing.

Project VOLT will oper­ate along­side SP ENW’s exist­ing fault-response pro­ce­dures. The tri­al is intend­ed to assess whether remote­ly oper­at­ed drones and auto­mat­ed data analy­sis can sup­port faster fault assess­ment and more proac­tive main­te­nance across elec­tric­i­ty dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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