Sectors
Capital Projects & Infrastructure Oil, Gas & Marine Power Grid Power Generation Renewables UtilitiesOur Solutions
Drone Services
Engineering Inspections Geospatial Surveys Emissions Monitoring Our Pilots and FleetVisual Data Management
iHawk™Advisory Services
AVIATENews
It
seems like talk of Net Zero is everywhere at the moment. While this is
fantastic news generally, it is not without consequence for utility
providers as large-scale customer movement from one source of energy to
another can have huge repercussions if not considered and planned for
properly.
For instance, as part of the Net Zero drive, the government has proposed that gas heating installations be outlawed in new build homes in the UK to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels – with upgrades to existing electrical heating expected to become mandatory to the remaining homeowners sometime after.
This initiative alone will be a cause of massive strain to the power grid as it exists currently.
Today we’re going to talk about what you can do to future-proof your grid, what happens if you don’t and how utilizing data can help keep the lights on.
While this is not a doomsday call – the British power grid is one of
the most secure in the world and boasted a fantastic 99.999967%
reliability score in 2019-2020 - it's no time for complacency either.
That figure is reflective of the status quo, where gas is still the
dominant source of electricity generation in the UK, producing 35.7% of electricity in 2020.
That
figure will quickly change. Very soon, more and more people will drive
electric cars, heat their homes electrically, all at the same time
throttling a grid not designed or maintained for the level of usage that
it soon will be responsible for.
It’s only a matter of time, in
that case, before we could see large areas of the country go dark
because the inconsistent and irregular inspection of assets is not
reflective of the new increased usage of customers.
While the drive for Net Zero is in place, utility providers are in
receipt of government funding that's awarded on the basis of several key
metrics – one of those being Customer Minutes Lost (CML).
This is calculated by the sum of all customer minutes lost, divided by the total number of customers.
If providers fall below a certain threshold, penalties and fines are imposed upon them.
Cyberhawk offer regular and consistent inspections via drone that not only give utility providers photographic evidence of any faults we find but also include detailed engineering reports that make sure providers are as prepared as possible to accommodate any issues and keep customer minutes lost to an absolute minimum.
Interested in learning more about our power grid capabilities?
Get our brochure here.
It is imperative that utility providers act quickly while their
network is running well and put an asset management system in place that
includes regular and consistent inspections of your assets.
The
upshot of doing this by drone inspection is that this can be done while
your assets are live – so not only is it the safest method of inspection
possible – it means your service runs uninterrupted too.
This
way, you can catch potential faults and repair them while they are in
their infancy before they can have disastrous consequences on your
entire grid.
Equally important in the carbon reduction stakes,
is that inspections by helicopter require an expensive and dangerous
amount of fuel to run. This is in stark contrast to a light and dynamic
drone which flies on next to nothing, comparatively.
When we devised our data solution iHawk, our aim was to enable our clients to do more with less.
We
can take all your existing data - whether that be from line patrollers,
helicopters or drones - and integrate it into one user-friendly
interface that provides smarter outcomes for you and your customers.
We
grade towers using a 1-4 defect severity scoring system and results are
then sent to clients using iHawk. It allows users to view the status of
their entire asset portfolio at a glance. They can then
prioritize repair, organize maintenance and replacement and view
detailed engineering analysis associated with all identified defects.
If you would like to hear more about any of our products or services, you can contact us directly here.