These days have shown us that we cannot take safety for granted. Unfortunately, emergencies can and will happen. Being prepared to react when the time comes is half of the way through avoiding big losses.
The power grids use case
Not taking into account major events - such as hurricanes, snowstorms or Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) - on average in the US, customers experience around two power outages a year lasting from 1 to 3 hours. According to Bloomberg, this can reflect up to $150b / year in losses only in the US, affecting manufacturing and retail companies, data centers, hospitals and so on.
As for major events, the scenario can get worse. By the end of 2018, Hurricane Michael caused 1,7m power outages in the Southeast US alone. Whereas in California, in October 2019, PSPS caused 46h power outages and 2,3MM people without electricity. And these are just a few examples.
Sterblue can help accelerate the grid re-energization and customer communication.
At Sterblue we build the central platform for infrastructure inspections. We have started with regular inspections of energy infrastructures such as transmission and distribution grids, wind turbines and cooling towers. And today we are extremely happy to unveil our live reporting capabilities using off-the-shelf DJI drones, the Sterblue Mobile App and the Sterblue Cloud Platform.
How does it work?
Fly the drone as usual with the Sterblue Mobile App and, as soon as you discover a problem on the distribution or transmission grid, take a picture. Your expert teams in the office will have live access to a qualified and geo-referenced anomaly information in the CSV reporting module on the Sterblue Cloud Platform. You can save hours in back and forth walks on the field and make communication more fluid between your teams in these critical moments.
As perfectly explained in this article from Eric J. Charette, it is crucial to provide more accurate and faster information for both utility companies and final consumers in order to better restore power in case of major events.
If you want to test our solutions or chat with us, feel free to contact us here.
