Global digital unmanned inspection to safeguard the security of Fujian power grid

After the typhoon hit head-on, the power line tripped, and we carried dry food and relied on our feet to inspect the power grid for damage, making it difficult to repair it. “Feng Zhenbo, a veteran electrician, was once busiest during the typhoon prone season.” At that time, I fantasized that if there were a plane that could fly over, we would see it in a blink of an eye.

Feng Zhenbo is a third level employee of the Transmission and Inspection Center of State Grid Fuzhou Power Supply Company. Since working in 1986, he has been rooted in the front line of power transmission live line work, growing from a front-line worker to a production skill expert of the State Grid Corporation of China, a national technical expert, a craftsman from a major country and a national model worker who enjoys special government subsidies from the State Council.

Nowadays, Feng Zhenbo’s “fantasy” has become a reality – drone autonomous inspection has become one of the important measures for ensuring power supply in Fujian Power Grid. Fujian Power Grid has equipped over 1500 drones of various types, achieving 163 substations, 34000 kilometers of transmission lines, and 12100 kilometers of distribution lines covered by drone inspections. On average, drones conduct over 310000 independent inspections of towers and towers each year, uploading over 5 million high-definition photos.

This is truly a revolutionary change, and the problems that have plagued us for decades have been solved, “Feng Zhenbo told reporters. In the past, manual inspections were not only time-consuming and laborious, but there were also situations where equipment defects could not be clearly seen due to various factors. Nowadays, unmanned aerial vehicles conduct autonomous inspections and form work orders to report to the team after detecting faults. The team eliminates defects based on the work order situation; Drones can also intervene in live working processes, greatly improving work efficiency.

The No.1 grid inspection task has been downloaded, and the on-site wind speed is less than level 5. The network and positioning signals are normal and ready to take off. Recently, near the 220 kV North Suburb Substation in Fuzhou, a drone equipped with visible light and infrared lenses took off from the airport and conducted inspections towards Tower 36, North Tower I Road. According to the pre planned route and tasks, the grid independent inspection tasks of 1 transmission tower, 3 distribution towers, and 1 substation interval were completed.

At the same time, technical personnel from State Grid Fujian Electric Power Research Institute, located ten kilometers away, are monitoring on-site operations in real-time through the “drone airport grid operation module”. After 25 minutes, the inspection task was completed, and the images were remotely uploaded to the platform and automatically named and matched. Artificial intelligence defect identification identified one rusted hardware, which was reviewed by the technician and then pushed to the line maintenance personnel.

During the peak period of the day, a total of 93 drones from Fujian Power Grid were conducting autonomous inspection operations simultaneously. Their flight trajectories and related information can be clearly monitored through the platform, achieving a closed-loop linkage throughout the entire process of “drone autonomous inspection operations – intelligent identification of equipment defects – production system defect notification”.

In order to accelerate the application of digital technology in power unmanned aerial vehicle inspection, State Grid Fujian Electric Power Research Institute has established a digital technology application development team for machine inspection. The airport grid operation module independently developed by the team has achieved full process online control of functions such as receiving multi-professional inspection work orders, distributing tasks, airport scheduling, result classification, and intelligent image analysis; Configure drone airports at grid points to automatically receive remote commands and independently carry out takeoff, inspection, landing, charging, data uploading, and other tasks without the need for manual on-site assistance.

Chen Chongjin, Senior Expansion Manager of Dajiang Energy Team, said that the release of Dajiang Airport in March 2022 will bring inspection into the “era of fully digital unmanned inspection”, greatly improving operation and maintenance efficiency. Fujian Power Grid is one of the first pilot application customers. Dajiang Airport combines intelligent IoT capabilities, full process closed-loop operation capabilities, and cloud edge collaboration front-end capabilities to achieve deeper, wider, and more reliable manual substitution.