River crossing, long-span conductor inspection made easy

Accessing in-span conductors after an icing and fault event at a river crossing near Mission, B.C.

Aeriosense worked with the BC Hydro engineering team to access in-span conductors after an icing and fault event at a river crossing near Mission, BC.

The inspection of mid-span conductors of a river crossing is challenging because of difficult access and location below the shield wire. Attempts to perform inspection using conventional methods using helicopter and climbing were unsuccessful.

A drone is a good tool for performing this type of inspection, but manually piloting the drone along and curved path of the catenary made by the conductor is challenging and slow even for experienced pilots.

This is where automated drone inspection makes the job easy and fast. Aeriosense software creates a path that matches the curve of the conductor and guides the drone along the path. In this case, live video feed was used to conduct the condition assessment, but further review of the data supplemented the field inspection.

During this project, an inspection was conducted in rain and wind, and despite these challenging conditions damaged conductor was identified mid-span and provide the utility with the critical information they needed to make a decision and prevent a prolonged outage.