E-Paper
U.P.: Now drones to keep eye on power transmission lines in Prayagraj division
In view of the challenges that it faces in using traditional methods to inspect overhead power transmission lines, the Uttar Pradesh Power Transmission Corporation Limited (UPPTCL) has decided to take help of drones for the work
In view of the challenges that it faces in using traditional methods to inspect overhead power transmission lines, the Uttar Pradesh Power Transmission Corporation Limited (UPPTCL) has decided to take help of drones for the work.
The technology, which is already in use in some select divisions of the state, will be also introduced in Prayagraj division in the coming months. For this, the authorities will soon be floating a tender, said a senior UPPTCL official aware of the move.
“Two transmission lines of the division, including the 220KVA Rewa Road-Cantonment Line and the 132KVA Rewa Road-Minto Park Line, would be surveyed and inspected using drones,” said executive engineer (transmission), Prayagraj, SK Verma.
The entire stretch of transmission lines would be inspected as part of this effort through a thorough survey undertaken using drones which will give us a clear view from the top, he added.
The official also said although binoculars are used to inspect the lines closely, the upper sides of the lines are not seen clearly and here comes into play the role of a drone.
“The data, video and pictures collected by drones not only detect the faults but also help in constant survey of the high transmission lines, especially in those areas where inspecting the lines through human eyes is quite cumbersome and seldom not as per desired outcome,” he said.
The decision of the transmission corporation bears significance as the traditional methods of overhead power line inspections are mostly unsuited for the task as the height of transmission towers is too high and wide. Detection and inspection of insulators in aerial images with cluttered backgrounds is a challenging task for autonomous inspections.
Last year, an associate professor of the department of mechanical engineering at Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT), JC Mohanta and a research scholar Mohd Faiyaz Ahmed had developed a vision-based inspection drone which will help detect faults in live power transmission lines.
The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV/quadcopter), developed by Mohanty and Ahmed can hover over the transmission towers and capture images and videos by following pre-determined waypoints (coordinated movement).
“The deep learning (DL) technique is used as the backbone analysis for inspection which primarily uses the data of aerial images and videos captured during inspection for fault detection of power transmission components. The experimental results show that the proposed deep learning architecture successfully identifies the anomalies of insulators such as cracks, missing top caps and broken disc etc. with a detection accuracy up to 93.5% with a detection speed of 58.2 frames/sec,” said Mohanty.
“The quadcopter developed based on DL algorithm can be promising towards smart inspection and detection of faults in power transmission lines especially in a country like India,” he added.
