Energy / Utilities

Energy infrastructure may be most obvious beneficiary of cutting-edge technology. Maintaining performance and reliability of infrastructure assets is mandated by Fortune 500 companies and governmental agencies worldwide. Many are already embracing this technology with instances of certain forward-thinking companies that have 100+ drones and in-house pilots already in their fleet.

Critical assets such as turbines, substations, power lines and pipelines are the veins that distribute energy to our society. Routine inspection and maintenance is essential to the longevity of the utilities and energy sector. Failure to maintain these assets can result in costly outages or disastrous implications.

Drones and other sensors such as Lidar, Thermal and Corona cameras are key to creating datasets that provide a deeper look into potential future opportunities (i.e. preventative maintenance), increase efficiency for reporting to stakeholders, provide a historical record and help plan for expansion.

Top Three Advantages

DIGITIZE ASSETS

Create a 3D
representation of
your assets to plan and
schedule maintenance

INSPECT FOR MAINTENANCE

Identify gas leaks,
electrode waste and
thermal dissipation

REDUCE HUMAN RISK

Increase speed and
reduce risky jobs such
as retrieving water samples
from tailings ponds

APPLICATIONS

Wind turbines: Inspectors are faced with navigating hazardous environments such as extreme heights and other environmental factors when performing manual inspections on turbines. Climbing and repelling from structures is not only dangerous, but highly inefficient. Our team has successfully inspected over 1700 turbines in 2019 utilizing drone and Lidar technologies.

Power lines: Traditional inspection methods include climbing or having helicopters fly close to these high voltage towers. This method is not only extremely dangerous but also time consuming and expensive. Drone and UV Corona sensors enable inspectors to safely and efficiently inspect and document the Corona effects from power lines and generators. Furthermore, drone and Lidar sensor technologies can create accurate point-cloud data for analysis and detection of line sagging and intrusions such as vegetation.

Solar farms: Vast inspections of solar panel arrays is expensive due to the extensive manual labor required. This means sparse inspections are performed on roughly only 10% of sites, resulting in major inefficiencies that affect stakeholders and consumers. Traditional methods of inspection can also be highly inaccurate as some issues are undetectable to the human eye. Drone and thermal imaging technology enables organizations to inspect vast amounts of panels and document minute defects in order to send in crews for repair or replacement.

Pipelines: Energy regulators have found success in implementing drones for pipeline compliance inspections. This enables inspectors to eliminate hours of trekking across difficult terrain to a matter of minutes in the air. This has resulted in thousands of hours saved per year for inspectors, while providing quality, actionable data.

One of the biggest hurdles that companies face when attempting to adopt drone technology is product selection, the operational learning curve and navigating regulations.

We provide our clients with end-to-end solutions to help them get the jumpstart needed to confidently use drone technology. Our clients have relied on us to get the right equipment, training and support, which has resulted in countless successful integration of UAV and sensor technologies into energy operations. It has increased safety and efficiency, ultimately reducing costs on all sites.

Similar to Forestry, the Energy sector can benefit from Lidar sensors that are usable on aircraft, helicopter, drone, VTOL, UAV, car, backpack or handheld.

HELICOPTER MOUNT

Cover a lot of terrain fast with Lidar sensors
Fly 100 - 900 metres
RIEGL sensor
Integrated camera (24 megapixel)

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DRONE MOUNT

Take off car or helicopter and put on drone
Fly slow and low to acquire more data points
More thorough penetration of canopy
Higher resolution than a helicopter
Quick to deploy
18 - 20 minutes of fly time
Built-in camera
Highly portable
Live view of data collection via laptop connection
Average 40 acres / flight

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CAR MOUNT

High resolution
Great for forestry roads
Easy to mount
Live view of data collection via laptop connection
Good for spotting potential future hazards that otherwise would close the road (i.e. falling trees or potential landslides)

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BACKPACK

If you already have your team walking, collect value datasets to merge with your aerial datasets
Effective for under the tree canopy
Walk the forest and gather valuable data
Trunk size
Forest floor data
Colourized point cloud
Camera
GPS / GNSS
4 - 6 hours run time on each battery
One-click operation

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