Telangana uses drones for inspection of extra high tension power lines, towers

The Telangana government is planning to scale up the drone-based aerial survey of high tension transmission towers after the successful completion of a pilot.

The automated inspections deploying drones can reduce the man-hours and costs by approximately 50 per cent, in addition to reducing the potential life risk posed by manual inspection of the power lines, officials said.

The Emerging Technologies Wing of Telangana’s ITE&C Department had initiated the project in August 2020 in partnership with TS-TRANSCO, aimed at leveraging drones and Artificial Intelligence to overcome the limitations of manual tower inspections.

A Hyderabad based start-up Centillion Networks operated the drone technology for inspection, monitoring and patrolling of the Extra High Tension transmission towers, lines, and substations with high quality 4K resolution cameras and an AI-based image recognition system.

Pilots were undertaken for inspection of EHT transmission line towers for 220 VK Chandrayagutta – Ghanapur line, 220 KV Shivarampally - Gachibowli line, 132 KV Minpur -Jogipet line, 220 KV Budidampadu - Waddekothapally line, and for another 10 towers. Inspection of each tower took about 20 minutes of time.

The drone survey was followed by tower inspection in the presence of Telangana State Transmission Corporation (TRANSCO) and ITE&C officials. Inspection reports for each tower included photos, videos along with the specification of issues thereby suggesting actionable interventions.

Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, ITE&C Department said, “Telangana is one of the leading states in leveraging drones across various use-cases, and the inspection of towers for TS-TRANSCO is one of the most innovative. With the new drone rules liberalizing the sector, the adoption can be rapidly scaled.”

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