Local Power Company Using Drones to Assist Maintenance

WHITWELL, Tenn. (WDEF) – One local power company is taking a new approach to diagnosing issues with their power grid.

The Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative (SVEC) serves Marion, Sequatchie, Bledsoe, and Grundy counties.

A lot of this area has rough terrain, with a rolling valley sandwiched in between the Cumberland Plateau and Walden’s Ridge.

This can present challenges for SVEC, but they hope drones will help negate some of them.

The Senior Systems Arborist, for SVEC, Roy Harver, said, “What we’re doing is taking the drones, flying the right-a-ways, doing the pole inspection and also doing a line-of-sight inspection.”

Harver’s mission for years with SVEC has been to identify problematic trees and shrubbery that could cause issues for their power grid.

He says the use of multiple drones enhances the Co-Op’s ability to try to mitigate future power outages.

Harver said, “This is more of a preventative maintenance kind of deal that we are doing. This is taking these and putting them in hard-to-reach places that would take us longer to get into on foot and some hazardous conditions.”

Crews displayed their work in sites around Whitwell on Wednesday.

They flew three separate drones; a fixed wing, a hexacopter, and a v-tol drone; through a miles long clearing through the town to inspect the state of their power lines.

Harver said, “You can identify certain hazards without actually having to walk in there to do it. Based on what you are finding, you can take whatever equipment you need to fix the problem.”

The drones that the Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative uses vary in size.

They all collect images to help in their preventative maintenance. 

Harver said, “In the long run it is going to save us some money because if we are able to go in and identify hazards without having to send people in, risking injury, we’ll be able to have them go in, get pictures and know what we need to fix the issues so we can just make one quick trip in, get it mitigated, and get it taken care of without having an outage.”

The drones stay under 400 feet off the ground to maintain FAA regulations.

SVEC does say most of this work takes place in remote areas, away from any housing.