Grid operators are key to maintaining safe and reliable energy delivery, directly impacting the communities they serve. However, aging infrastructure, remote locations, and weather conditions can pose serious risks to reliable energy delivery, making regular inspections and maintenance even more critical.

Founded in 2018, Airpelago offers a smarter, greener, and safer way to inspect infrastructure using autonomous drones, helping grid operators address these challenges while promoting more sustainable operations.

Why are asset inspections important?

Regular inspections offer valuable insights into the condition of grid assets, empowering operators to make data-driven decisions. By collecting detailed asset data, companies can shift from reactive maintenance—addressing issues only after they occur—to preventive and predictive maintenance.

This shift enables more strategic investments by identifying potential issues early, extending asset lifespan, and ultimately enhancing long-term grid resilience, reducing costs, and improving customer satisfaction.

Drone inspections have emerged as the preferred inspection method

Helicopters are still the most commonly used solution for asset inspection, but they come with a variety of challenges, including:

• Safety concerns and potentially lethal accidents
• Significant environmental impact
• Noise and disturbances for land owners and wildlife
• Data collection quality
• Public’s perception of the grid owner in terms of cost, safety, and sustainability

Drone inspections stand out as an alternative. They are safer, with no reported severe accidents; more sustainable, reducing emissions by up to 10 kg of CO2 per kilometer during inspections; 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.

‍Introduction to Airpelago in 15 Minutes

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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Challenges for conducting power line inspections with drones at scale

While nearly anyone can fly a drone and perform power line inspections, challenges arise when handling large-scale projects, such as inspecting 10,000 kilometers or more. These challenges can be grouped into the following categories:

• Costs efficiency: The process must be cost-effective to remain a viable option.
• Standardization: Ensuring consistent data quality across all assets.
• Regulations and security: Complying with drone regulations and managing IT security.
• Analysis & software: Effectively managing data to gain actionable insights and prioritize maintenance.

Airpelago has solved drone inspections at significant scale

Airpelago has solved these challenges thanks to three key aspects:

1. Drone automation
2. Light UAS operator Certificate (LUC)
3. Airpelago Power: a proprietary software optimized for enhanced quality, efficiency and security

1. Drone Automation: Enhances efficiency and quality‍

Autonomous drones significantly enhance efficiency and ensure consistent data quality across the entire grid.

For Airpelago, efficiency primarily refers to how many kilometers a single drone pilot can inspect in one day, without compromising on quality or safety.

On average, Airpelago inspects three times more kilometers per pilot per day compared to competing drone service providers.

Depending on factors such as asset type, inspection type, and terrain, efficiency can increase by 10 to 50 kilometers per pilot per day. Drone automation plays a key role in achieving this efficiency.

Autonomous drones fly automatically, allowing the pilot to focus on safety while being ready to take control if necessary. This autonomy ensures inspections are carried out with greater consistency and higher-quality data, resulting in a more reliable process. Additionally, it makes drone operations more accessible and less physically demanding for pilots.

Autonomous drones offer a truly scalable solution and standardize inspection projects. Airpelago’s approach involves using LiDAR data, which automatically generates the inspection pattern for all assets across the entire grid.

In conclusion, drone automation boosts efficiency and ensures consistent image quality—captured from the same angles, every time, by every pilot, throughout the entire inspection project.

2. Light UAS operator Certificate (LUC): Regulatory compliance and safety culture

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).

Based on our experience inspecting over 60,000 km of power lines in 2023-2024, BVLOS capability is essential for large-scale inspections. Without it, regulatory requirements for maintaining visual line of sight would significantly hinder efficiency and compliance.

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. 

The software is designed with multiple stakeholders in mind, offering different user roles for Airpelago’s staff, drone pilots, customers, and authorities.

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‍Benefits of Airpelago Power:

• Planning and project tracking: Upload asset data (e.g., .kml files) and visualize it on an interactive map. View various map layers, such as airspace, for risk assessments, and monitor inspection progress in near real-time.
• Flight automation: Automated drone flight patterns, based on LiDAR data, optimize precision and efficiency for various inspection types, including overview, annual, detailed inspections, and LiDAR scanning. Automation ensures consistent data quality with standardized resolution, camera angles, and flight safety.
• Secure data upload: Pilots securely upload images in a standardized format, with each image automatically linked to the correct tower/pole and project. Data is stored on Airpelago's secure servers in Sweden or on the customer's servers.
• Visualization of data: All collected data is visualized by project on a map view, enabling users to easily access images for each pole and evaluate their quality. Images are displayed in the highest resolution, with fast loading times and a user-friendly interface.
• Regulations and reporting: Functions for reporting deviations, flight logs, and documentation in accordance with regulatory requirements.
• Multi-factor authentication: Tailored access control and user roles with varying permissions.

Read more about Airpelago Power here.

Airpelago - a trusted partner for power line inspection projects 

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.

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‍How to get started?

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