November 30th, 2024Extreme weather ahead: drones hone in on fire hazards

Local households and businesses are being urged to prepare for possible power outages in extreme conditions this summer with the Bureau of Meteorology anticipating “warmer than average days and nights” ahead.

Summer is traditionally a season that brings extreme weather events, such as high heat, strong winds
and lightning, which can damage the power network and lead to localised power outages.

CitiPower and Powercor Head of Customer Experience Adam Nason said now was the time for
everyone to plan ahead and know how to prepare for potential power outages.

“Our specialist teams work year-round to make sure our network is prepared for extreme summer
months and are ready to respond safely and quickly if the power does go out,” Mr Nason said.

“We are also asking everyone to act too by making preparing for power outages part of their
emergency plan.”

This year, CitiPower and Powercor has established an in-house drone inspection team to inspect the
tops of power poles in the most high-risk bushfire areas, adding an extra layer of protection on top of
an already-comprehensive asset inspection and maintenance program.

Powercor’s team of CASA-qualified drone pilots help conduct additional inspections in high risk areas.
This work is over and above the broader program that involves inspecting and maintaining more than
77,000 kilometres of powerlines, 602,000 power poles and other infrastructure on a rolling cycle of at
least 2.5 years.

“We are always looking at ways to build on how we keep our network safe and reliable, and we are
already seeing major benefits from introducing drone technology to complement our inspection programs,” Mr Nason said.

“Our team of drone pilots have been flying small quadcopter drones above our network, capturing
valuable data and images of assets such as cross-arms, pole tops and insulators.

“This means we can pick up issues that may arise in-between our usual inspection cycles. For
example, we have found and removed some bird nests on high voltage insulators this year that may
have otherwise led to an outage occurring.”

Other activities Powercor has conducted to prepare for summer include:

• Using LiDAR technology mounted on helicopters to inspect vegetation across our network.
  With an expanded helicopter fleet we completed our full year inspection program ahead of
  time in June, with additional pre-summer inspections completed in July in our highest fire risk
  areas.
• Cut trees away from more than 55,000 powerline spans (the line between two power poles) in
  the CitiPower and Powercor networks – an increase of 27% on last year.
• Rolling out new fault indication technology across the southwest coast, Ballarat and Bendigo
  regions in areas protected by bushfire safety devices known as REFCLs. These allow our
  teams to quickly find faults and restore power to more customers faster.
• Installed 60 additional remote switches to allow more of the network to automatically restore
  power if a fault occurs.