Aerial inspections of OHLs from Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS)

Completed

Other Power and Storage Technologies(Electricity transmission and distribution)

Applied Research and Development

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Project Contact
National Grid Electricity Transmission

Network Innovation Allowance

Ofgem

01 September 2023

31 December 2024

ENA months

£596,000

Power

London

Network Innovation Allowance

Project Contact, National Grid Electricity Transmission

This project will carry out a number of trials using drones from BVLoS to assess the condition of OHL fittings. This will allow the technologies current performance to be measured and to enable its future performance to be extrapolated with a high degree of confidence. Flight plans with be developed and tested to allow for longer flights. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) will evaluate the technology and approach to determine system safety. "The project will be delivered in seven work packages: Design, Planning, Reporting and disseminationCore technology development (incorporating trials feedback)Integration in to NGETs workflows and toolsTesting and EvaluationAdvance aviation permissions Extension to long linear flightDemonstrate data transfer to third party data platforms " "The main objectives of the project are to: Generate automated flight plans that cover OHL fitting inspections for the various configurations on the network. Combined these with the steel work flight plans to create an all-encompassing inspection regime.NGET to secure extended BVLOS permission that covers a larger part of the transmission network."

Its important we have a good understanding of the condition of our assets to ensure we maintain reliability of the network. This project will focus on the automation of data collection for OHL fittings and broaden its application on the network using drones from Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLoS) building on work done during VICAP (NIA2_NGET0009). If successful there will be a reduction in the amount of flying required by helicopters, a reduction in the number of assets that are missed on primary inspections and a reduction in the number of climbing inspections.

18/10/23