40,000 km inspection to Estonia’s largest network operator

Hepta

The success story of Hepta has become known due to mix of unique skill-set and experience in the team:

• 15+ years of experience in on-ground grid inspection
• 7+ years of experience in helicopter grid inspection
• 8+ years of experience in drone grid inspection
• Including data scientists working with satellite data, software engineers deploying machine learning models, aerospace engineers having previously built manned helicopters

Aforementioned combination of unique skill-sets enabled us to approach Elektrilevi’s use case in an agile way.

“Carrying the weight of analyzing the entire electricity network of Estonia, cannot be disrupted with novel solutions promtly and in full-scale from the next day. ”

The heavy responsibility was not to be taken lightly.

Read the full use case below. 

Start with small steps

During the first 6-month kick-off period our team studied cautiously every detail of the Estonian network, by executing the inspection with precisely the same – conventional and inefficient on-ground methods. We learned, and we did not enforce any changes.

Our primary target was to obtain clear overview of customer’s procedures, enabling us to:

• identify the core values & technical aspects, important to Elektrilevi
• identify deficiencies within the existing procedures
• pinpoint potential improvements without involving any risks

Slow but steady progress

At first, we trained our on-ground team with small off-the-shelf drones. Easy to handle, low-entrance in costs. First UAV missions were conducted on the middle voltage overhead lines, which from the airborne inspection perspective have significant risk-lowering advantages comparing to low voltage networks:

• Lines are longer and straighter, including with less branches
• Right of Way (danger zone) of the line corridor is wider and cleaner

First 2 months of sUAV-testing eventuated with two times faster inspection results!

Instead of typical 160 km per month, we reached to astonishing 320 km of analyzed grid, per one engineer.

As a “side bonus”, we started to receive frequent positive mentions from the customer, based on to the digital footprint which the high-definition close-up view of the UAV images successfully supplied.

Having injected by the boost of confidence from the sudden success we replace sUAV’s with Hepta’s in-house built industrial drones, delivering BVLOS missions to hundreds of kilometers. 
As for the low voltage, we are currently following smilar cautious principles:

• Implementation of the small UAV’s
• Partially replacing sUAV’s with long-range drones