5 THINGS

TO KNOW
About How Drones Are
Being Used in Energy &
Utilities in North America

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 5 Things to Know About How Drones Are Being Used in Energy & Utilities in North America

Energy companies need to perform tasks related to the inspection of thousands of miles
of pipelines as well as the monitoring and maintenance of transmission lines that can
run through multiple ecosystems and jurisdictions. Challenges with managing utility
infrastructure of this scale means that the ability to automate inspection tasks and gather
information in faster and safer ways will create incredible efficiencies. That’s why the energy
sector as a whole is quickly adopting drones.

Using drones and associated software, operators can easily convert data into 2D or 3D models
for various areas including right-of-way monitoring. Drones are also helping with wind
turbine and tower inspection by reducing inspection time. Additionally, removing the need
for all but the most essential climbs on such structures decreases risk. All of these efficiencies
are driving the desire of energy companies to embrace and utilize drone technology, but
exactly how they’re able to do so depends on a number of factors.

Whether it’s to inspect wind farms, solar farms, electrical distribution lines or a variety of other
pieces of infrastructure, drones are making sense for companies of all sizes in the energy
sector. Critically though, they’re doing so in ways that can be measured and quantified.

1
It’s Not About “Either/Or” When It Comes to
Outsourcing or Building a Drone Program
Energy companies across North America have built their own drone programs and outsourced
drone services as needed, but most are focused on either one approach or the other. Does it
make sense for energy companies take an “either/or” approach when it comes to these options
though?

“Companies are really taking a hybrid approach,” says Patrick Lohman, Vice-President of Energy
for PrecisionHawk. “There are a lot of benefits to internalizing some of that work. A lot of these
government-regulated utilities like to internalize things, so they can benefit on the capitalization
side. A company’s plan often is to internalize some of the programs they’re currently externalizing
with service providers as it gets more mature.”

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 5 Things to Know About How Drones Are Being Used in Energy & Utilities in North America

Ultimately, questions related to building a program or outsourcing drone services need

to be sorted through after understanding how the technology will speak to core business
challenges. Drones can help solve business problems that energy companies are struggling
with, but those problems need to be clearly identified in order to determine what approach is
going to be best.

2
Drones are Changing Approaches
and Expectations
Given their responsibilities for operating nearly 200,000 miles of electric transmission and
distribution lines in addition to more than 80,000 miles of natural gas pipeline, it’s no wonder that
Southern Company is considered to be one of the premier energy companies in America. In order
to best serve 9 million customers through its subsidiaries, it’s also no wonder that the organization
has embraced drone technology. They’ve created a unique program in the utility space that is
changing approaches and expectations across the company.

“The frequency of our inspections has increased in some of the confined spaces due to the
efficiency gained when using the UAS tech,” said Corey Hitchcock, a UAS Standardization Pilot at
Southern Company. “That said, the more important thing to note is that we are looking at things
and inspecting things that haven’t been inspected before due to the inability to safely access
confined spaces or areas at height.”

Thinking about a drone as just another tool in the toolkit often means considering how the
technology can supplement or augment tasks that are already being performed, but Hitchcock’s
example highlights a whole different value proposition. It’s one enabled by the ability to use the
technology to perform tasks that were not possible or economically feasible using traditional
approaches.

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 5 Things to Know About How Drones Are Being Used in Energy & Utilities in North America

As an example of that, the 30x optical zoom payload of the sensors they’re using have
revolutionized the way Southern Company does inspections. The detail gathered using these
sensors has allowed them to have a greater standoff distance and has decreased the risk to the
aircraft when conducting inspections on energized 500kv structures. The FLIR XT camera has
allowed them to gather data that they never could have gotten without this sensor. Thermal
orthomosaics of power plant equipment has allowed them to have information that wouldn’t
have been available without this technology.

3 Data Discipline is Essential

One of the major benefits of utilizing drone technology is that it allows organizations to create
a record of the condition of various pieces of equipment. San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E)
inspectors are currently doing visual inspections without taking any pictures, which means drones
can create a permanent record when they capture the information required for an inspection. This
allows an organization to refer back to the condition of a variety of pieces of infrastructure, but
there are dangers with being undisciplined when creating these kinds of records.

“You can’t just go out there and grab data,” said Hector Ubiñas, Unmanned Aerial Systems Program
Lead at SDG&E. “It’s tempting to take 50 pictures of the same pole at a variety of angles, and with
a drone it’s easy enough to do just that. But then all of a sudden you have 500 pictures when you
only really need 10, and you have a mess on your hands. It’s critical that you establish the data
discipline to only capture the essential amount of pictures that you need, and no more.”

Even when limiting themselves to 4 pictures for a pole, things add up quickly. That underscores
the importance of having a data management tool ready to ingest everything and organize it.
It’s a point that illustrates data discipline isn’t just about taking only the necessary amount of
pictures but also having that data management piece figured out so that everything can be
easily organized, distributed and referenced. It’s an essential difference that has allowed SDG&E to
define what kind of efficiencies drones are creating for the company in the short and long term.

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 5 Things to Know About How Drones Are Being Used in Energy & Utilities in North America

4
Automation is Opening up Opportunities
Related to Preventive Maintenance
As drones become more efficient, the need for automated analysis solutions has become a
primary concern for operators and organizations. There is tremendous value associated with
being able to understand the current state of assets, but being able to answer questions like
“when is this going to fail?” opens up an entirely new value proposition related to preventative
maintenance.

“Currently, it takes an experienced commercial UAV pilot to safely operate a drone to execute a
survey, mapping and inspection mission,” said Anil Nanduri, Vice President and General Manager
of the Drone Group at Intel. “And once the data is captured during the flight, the data would
need to be processed by somebody with that knowledge and experience. The Intel Mission
Control flight planning software and Intel Insight Platform are software and services applications
that will make both the data capture and the data analyses process more automated, making
the technology easier to use and accessible to more people. It is our vision that once a flight is
planned, the operator could push a button and the drone would execute the flight as planned.
Once the data is uploaded into the cloud, Intel Insight platform will automatically do the data
analyses and processing, and provide reports to the client.”

As onboard capabilities become more automated, the skill set and specialized techniques of on-
staff talent are less critical, which will more easily enable adoption. Further developments related
to the automated delivery of reports will allow energy stakeholders to more easily identify issues
before they turn into problems to create a new paradigm around eliminating costly maintenance
tasks.

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5 Things to Know About How Drones are Being Used for Surveying & Mapping in North America

5 BVLOS Will Change Things…Eventually

Given the scale of the infrastructure and inspection tasks that energy companies have to deal
with, many are focused on the eventual efficiencies that will be opened up when drones can
more easily operate beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). These types of operations are restricted
under current regulation, but when those rules are eased, energy companies will be able to
perform automated inspections for their miles of power lines and pipelines that need to be
monitored. However, it’s important to understand how that eventual value is directly tied to the
difference the technology is making today.

“I would say that autonomous BVLOS operations will enable a major tipping point for the
commercial drone industry,” said Colin Guinn from Guinn Partners. “That value is certainly there
today. You have energy inspections, critical infrastructure inspections, construction sites and
plenty other use cases of drones where the value that’s created is so high that it makes sense to
potentially pay someone hundreds of dollars per hour to make this happen. If that were all that
ever happened, then the industry would continue to grow and still become an industry worth
billions of dollars. However, the moment that collecting that data, processing that data, and
delivering those insights, becomes fully autonomous, everything changes.”

Few deny the value at scale that drone technology represents for the energy industry, but
right now, companies working in the oil & gas sector have been able to define day-to-day cost
reductions of between 3.6 and 10%, with capital works projects being reduced by more than 20
percent. The future value of drone technology is going to be built on the differences it’s enabling
today, making it that much more important for energy stakeholders to consider what those
differences can look like for their organization.

Jeremiah Karpowicz, Visit Commercial UAV News for 24/7/365

Executive Editor news and information on commercial UAS.
Contact info: jkarpowicz@divcom.com

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