Simplifying Vegetation Management for Power Lines with Drones

Do you remember the aftermath of Cyclone Fani? It brushed past a trail of destruction by adversely affecting the state of Odisha. The storm’s rushing speed of 250 kilometres per hour had a devastating effect on lives, property, trees and other basic amenities. The effect of the cyclone was observed even after months as several rural areas continued to be in darkness due to lack of electricity.   

The question arises, why? 

The very close proximity of the tress to power lines are the main cause behind the prolonged duration of power failures during high winds and storms. Even in dry weather, the high branches of the trees often come in contact with the transmission lines causing them to catch fire, putting the nearby settlements in danger. Electricity can arc from the wires to a tree branch, igniting a fire or causing an outage. A tree does not need to make direct contact with a transmission line to create a hazard. Incompatible vegetation can lead to widespread power outages and threaten the reliability of the electric transmission system. 

Mitigating vegetation-related risks has been a major challenge for the electricity board. Moreover, every time an unfortunate incident occurs, the dense, incompatible vegetation around the transmission line hinders access for crews who may need to inspect, maintain and make repairs to the poles and wires, making the entire process quite expensive. 

Thus to avoid such incidents as much as possible, certain rules and regulations have been laid down. The following rules are applicable to distribution companies and landowners:

- Maintain distance between trees, electrical conductors and the infrastructure 

- Look into the possibility of trimming trees without defying any laws

Traditional methods for powerline inspection are not just time consuming but equally hazardous for the linesmen. Thus, making a shift to modern technology is what the industry demands to ensure safe and efficient operations.

The drones with their high resolution cameras collect comprehensive information of the ongoing projects. Equipped with HD cameras, proximity sensors and thermal cameras, the drones can help the electricians by capturing high quality, detailed images that can be used to find out the defects. Further, integrating drones with drone inspection software in analytics, AI, 3D imaging, and other tools increases their ability to obtain a wide range of information and identify faults.

Besides providing objective and comprehensive data, this new digital inspection process empowers electrical companies to more frequently inspect their infrastructure and store historical data, which in turn help to build predictive models and detect potential hazards before they occur. 

The drone technology offers several benefits when it comes to vegetation management such as -

- Generate an accurate vegetation inventory 

- Highlight areas where vegetation grows faster. This will alert the authorities to take necessary measures to prevent incidents

- Build predictive models of vegetation growth

- Virtually inspect your entire infrastructure, make annotations and easily share information with your team

- Regularly monitor the progress of an ongoing project 

- Enhance employee safety measures

- Save a lot of time and money

With years of expertise in the Drone Industry, IG Drones - India’s leading enterprise drone solution providers have successfully completed the monitoring of several transmission lines across India. (examples) With cutting-edge technology and a proficient team of drone pilots and professionals, we aim to makeshift from the traditional hazardous inspection methods to safer and advanced drones technology.

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