📹 Watch recorded webinar: Insights from 60.000 km of power line inspections
Why are drones the preferred inspection method and how can Airpelago support your business?
Reliable energy delivery is essential for a sustainable society, but aging infrastructure, remote locations, and harsh weather pose serious risks. Regular grid inspections are the crucial key to keeping energy delivery safe.
Shifting to drones for partial or full-grid inspections is a greener, safer, and more efficient strategy for TSOs and DSOs seeking to ensure power line reliance and proactive maintenance.
This article will outline why this transition is critical: why drones are a better option than other inspection methods, the challenges and solutions of scaling drone inspections, and why Airpelago has been a trusted partner for low-, medium-, and high-voltage inspections.
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To achieve high quality, green, and safe inspection of power lines, drones are the best method. Drones offer:
Drone inspections are safer than e.g helicopters, with no reported severe accidents; more sustainable, reducing emissions by up to 10 kg of CO2 per kilometer inspected power line; and quieter, causing minimal disturbance to people and wildlife.
Drones can capture images from multiple angles and distances, allowing for more thorough coverage of key asset points than traditional inspection methods. They can be equipped with various sensors, such as high-resolution cameras, LiDAR, and thermal cameras, depending on the specific needs. In other words, drone inspections identify more defects and provide deeper insights, enabling better data-driven decision-making for grid operations.
While anyone can fly a drone and perform manual power line inspections, challenges arise when handling large-scale projects, such as inspecting 1,000 kilometers or more. The challenges are:
These challenges can be solved with three key aspects:
1. Drone Automation: Enhances efficiency and quality
Autonomous drones significantly enhance efficiency and ensure consistent data quality across the grid.
Efficiency for power line inspections primarily refers to how many kilometers or towers a single drone pilot can inspect in one day, without compromising quality or safety.
With autonomous drones, a pilot can inspect three times more kilometers per pilot per day compared to flying manually. Autonomous drones also fly by themselves, allowing the pilot to focus on safety. Additionally, it makes drone operations more accessible and less physically demanding for pilots - enabling them to work 8 hours a day without exhaustion.
Depending on factors such as asset type, inspection type, and terrain, efficiency can be as high as 50 kilometers per pilot per day.
Airpelago’s automation software is built on LiDAR data, which automatically generates the inspection pattern for all assets across the entire grid.
2. BVLOS Operations
Based on our experience inspecting over 60,000 km of power lines in 2023-2024, BVLOS capability is essential for large-scale inspections. Regulatory requirements for maintaining visual line of sight significantly hinders efficiency in the field.
Airpelago holds a Light Unmanned Certificate (LUC) with privileges for self-authorization within the PDRA-G03 framework. This allows BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) flights in sparsely populated areas without requiring separate operational authorizations for each flight. The LUC also mandates a systematic safety management system (SMS) and internal compliance monitoring (CM).
3. Airpelago Power: "The world's best software for power line inspections with drones."
Airpelago's proprietary software, Airpelago Power, simplifies and enhances drone inspections, covering everything from planning and data collection to delivery and visualization. Airpelago uses the software in our own operations, helping us stay compliant, manage flight risks, fly autonomously, and manage large-scale projects with multiple pilots. Using such a tool enables large scale processes and enhances data security.
Read more about Airpelago Power here.
Airpelago is a trusted partner of over 50 European TSOs and DSOs like E.ON Sweden, Elvia, Tensio, Ellevio, Svenska Kraftnät, Electricity North West, Energinet, and NetzeBW, having inspected over 60.000 km of low, medium and high voltage power lines in 2023-2024 alone.
In 2024 , we helped our customers save 500,000 kg of CO2 emissions compared to helicopter inspections. We are continuously expanding into new markets while growing our team to provide support and training across various regions in Europe, such as the UK, Benelux, and the DACH region.
"Utilizing drone technology allows us to achieve enhanced safety, reduce noise and disturbance for land owners, and improve sustainability in our operations." - Kristian Flinth, Manager of Preventive Maintenance, Ellevio Central Sweden
Demonstrating the significant impact Airpelago delivers, 100% of our major customers have chosen to continue their partnerships with us in 2025.
If you are ready to learn more about autonomous drone inspections and Airpelago, we are here to provide you with all the additional information and guidance for an optimized drone inspection strategy. Please contact us here: https://www.airpelago.com/contact
Would you rather watch a video on the benefits of drone inspections? Sign up to watch Airpelago's co-founder and CEO Max Hjalmarsson talk about insights from over 60,000 km power line inspections.
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