By Tom Tate
Drones are in the news — a lot. Apart from military uses, commercial applications are growing. Amazon wants to use drones to deliver your packages. There is a rumor of a northern Minnesota retailer wanting to use them to deliver beer to ice fishermen. Farmers are testing them for crop management. So, will drones someday find a home working for your co-op? It’s likely. But first, a little history.
The first recorded use of drones for warfare occurred on August 22, 1849, when Austria attacked Venice, Italy, using unmanned explosive-laden balloons. Since then, military applications drove most of the advances. Drones are a perfect solution when you need to access information about areas that are either hard to reach or dangerous.
Drones are more properly known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, and are either autonomous or remotely piloted. Autonomous models follow a preprogrammed flight plan, whereas a licensed pilot flies the RP vehicle from a remote location. This remote location can be half a world away in military applications. For commercial use, significantly shorter distances are involved. Regardless of operation type, modern drones are either fixed-wing or rotary models.
But how can your co-op use a drone?
Assessing storm damage springs to mind. A helicopter or airplane can be used instead, but these options suffer from two issues. First, they are likely to be grounded for some time following the storm for pilot and crew safety. Co-op crews are in the field as soon as possible, often in the midst of the storm. Second, these alternative aircraft are expensive to operate.
So with ground access frequently blocked by debris or flooding, getting a comprehensive assessment of damage is both time consuming and dangerous. Flying a drone over the area can capture detailed images of the situation and help the co-op dispatch the right crews with the right materials to the right location. This kind of intelligence gets members’ lights back on faster.
Drones have significant potential in preventive maintenance. Programmed to fly over far-flung transmission and distribution lines using the co-op’s mapping data, a drone camera can record the route and return with an assessment of potential tree or vegetation problems.
Drones have significant potential in preventive maintenance. Programmed to fly over far-flung transmission and distribution lines using the co-op’s mapping data, a drone camera can record the route and return with an assessment of potential tree or vegetation problems. By integrating global positioning system data, the exact areas needing attention are pinpointed and crews are then dispatched to correct the issues. This eliminates a lot of time and expense patrolling lengthy rights-of-way.
Anticipating privacy concerns, drones will be programmed to fly specific routes as mentioned above. They won’t be looking at meters or the service wires from the pole to homes and businesses. Most video and other photographic data will never be seen by a human operator. It is simply too time consuming, especially when the co-op is restoring an outage. Software will analyze the imagery and identify potential problem areas for additional human interpretation.
Further applications include equipping the drone with an infrared camera to search for hot spots on power lines or inside substations. Many co-ops use handheld IR devices for just such purposes today. With a drone, they could cover far more area at a much lower cost. Problems could be solved before causing an interruption to your service.
The use of 3-D imaging to assess the condition of poles and towers in hard-to-reach areas is a possibility. Likewise, the impact of construction on wildlife could also be monitored if required by government agencies. Once in widespread use, you can be sure many more applications will develop. Delivering light materials to field crews? Pizza?
However, getting a drone in the air is not a trivial matter. Since recreational use of drones has created some issues, the Federal Aviation Administration is regulating their use for commercial activities. The co-op needs to get approval from the FAA to operate a drone and the pilot has to be FAA licensed and backed by dedicated and certified ground support. This will keep drones out of regular airspaces and away from sensitive areas. While the FAA was directed to streamline and expedite approvals for commercial drone use (the latest approval took exactly 90 days), getting ready to apply takes a lot of time and effort. Finally, drones capable of utility tasks can be expensive, ranging from a few thousand to half a million dollars.
As with all technology electric cooperatives investigate and deploy, drones — if they prove to be a feasible option — would be used to reduce operating costs and increase reliability. These amazing craft have significant potential to do both.
Tom Tate writes on cooperative issues for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.