A transformative tool
Published by Jessica Casey,
Editor
Energy Global,
The energy sector encompasses many types of power production facilities, whether it is traditional thermal plants, wind farms, or hydropower plants. Although all these facilities are very different in nature, they are all highly complex environments that require constant monitoring and inspection to guarantee their reliability and reduce unexpected downtimes. With growing demand for energy and a rising strain on the power plants’ infrastructure, inspecting them and making sure any issues are found on time is becoming increasingly important.
Traditionally, people inspecting these areas are required to access many confined, elevated, or hazardous spaces and perform the inspections manually (when this is possible). However, this often exposes workers to fall risks, asphyxiation, toxic gases, and other risks. Additionally, manual inspections are prone to incomplete data acquisition, human error, and long inspection times, which can result in costly downtime. To reach these areas, scaffolding may require several days or even weeks to be built and dismantled, and carries the risk of dropped or forgotten objects and work at height. For these reasons, many energy companies around the world are looking for new tools to carry out these inspections remotely without having to put people in danger or having to build scaffolding.
An example of someone invested in finding safer and more efficient ways of performing inspections in these types of environments is Joseph Valenzuela, Co-Founder of Pathfinder Optics. He explains that “the benefit of using drones [for an internal wind blade inspection] compared to having a human enter the blade is safety. The biggest thing is safety, but also efficiency. Having a wind turbine down for a full day can be very costly for the owners.” He is one of the many industry experts who identified drones as an ideal tool to collect critical data remotely. Inspection drones, like Flyability’s Elios 3, are designed specifically to address these challenges, providing a safer, faster, and more efficient alternative for data collection in challenging environments.
Wind turbine blades are just one of the many examples where people put them-selves at risk to carry out inspections and make sure energy production remains consistent and reliable. Other examples include thermal power plant assets like boilers, chimneys, steam pipelines, condensers, and cooling towers. Hydroelectric plants also require their penstocks, surge tanks, and water pipes to be inspected. But use cases for remote inspection tools in the energy sector are many more, with new applications for drones being discovered almost daily by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots around the world.
Could drones be the future of inspections in the energy sector?
Among several innovative remote inspection tools brought to the energy market, the most effective appear to be drones, and more specifically confined space drones. But why? As mentioned earlier, many areas that require frequent monitoring happen to be very complex environments, which can be enclosed, at height, or filled with pipes or other components, making it difficult for many people and solutions to move around them freely. On the other hand, drones built to inspect confined spaces can easily navigate these environments and also fly at heights where other ground robotic solutions cannot reach. This means they have a high level of versatility that allows them to inspect pretty much any type of asset.
For these reasons, inspection drones are transforming the way energy facilities monitor and maintain their critical infrastructure. In fact, the energy/utilities industry has the highest use of drones among all major industries, and according to data from Drone Industry Insights, it is estimated that the drone market in this sector will reach US$4.4 billion by 2030. Clearly, drones cannot replace human work and maintenance, but they are able to provide a complete assessment of an area to determine whether human intervention is in fact required and whether an environment is safe to enter before sending in people. For instance, a 50-m-tall boiler may be in perfectly good condition to continue operating; traditionally, the boiler would have to be shut down for weeks, with thousands of dollars spent on scaffolding, and then have people work at height for multiple days just to get that information. Drones, on the other hand, can remotely collect that very same data in hours, record it, and store it for future evaluation and comparison. It allows inspectors to share what they see with anyone around the world in a matter of seconds, reducing risks of human error and miscommunication. Then, only if an issue is discovered, will humans have to be involved to perform the repair work, and even then, this can be limited to the specific area where a defect was found.
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Read the article online at: https://www.energyglobal.com/special-reports/26122025/a-transformative-tool/