Gurugram, 21stMarch, 2023 : Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (POWERGRID), a Maharatna CPSE of Ministry of Power and India’s largest electric power transmission utility is at the forefront of deploying state of the art cutting edge technologies.
POWERGRIDhas initiated use of drones for EHV (Extra High Voltage) transmission line patrollingto identify defects using high resolution cameras.
Drones are being deployed for activities such as tower inspection, clearance measurement & vegetation management.Dronesenable effective patrolling of transmission line sections falling under difficult/ unapproachable areas (i.e. valley, hilly, river crossing, flooded areas)as well as areas having right-of-way (RoW) issues etc.
They are also being deployed for disaster management to carry out tasks such as damage assessment/aerial surveys, emergency line patrolling. POWERGRID has also developed an Artificial Intelligence based tool which has automated the defect identification process from photographs captured during drone patrolling.
POWERGRID presently owns & operate fleet of micro category dronesalso for routine transmission line patrolling. During month of February 2023, POWERGRID patrolled about 200 towers using its own in-house drones.
The total transmission assets of POWERGRID and its subsidiaries as on February 28, 2023, include 1,73,815 circuit km of transmission lines, more than 2,90,000 EHV towers of various configuration, 271 substations and transformation capacity of 4,93,862 MVA.With the use of state-of-the-art maintenance techniques, automation and digitization, POWERGRID has maintained transmission system availability more than 99%.
