Now, drones to survey high tension lines in Telangana

HYDERABAD: Thanks to the recently concluded drone pilot project, in the coming days, technicians may be spared of the dangers of manual inspection of extra high tension (EHT) transmission towers and lines in Telangana. It will now be drones that will be taking up the job of inspecting these towers and lines.
The Telangana government on Tuesday said the emerging technologies wing of its ITE&C department along with Hyderabad-based startup Centillion Networks has concluded the pilot of an aerial survey of EHT transmission towers & lines using drones and artificial intelligence (AI).
In the pilot project, that commenced in August 2020, Centillion Networks’ drones inspected, monitored and patrolled EHT transmission towers, lines, and substations with a 4K resolution camera and AI image recognition system in around 20 minutes.
“It is estimated that automated inspections using drones can reduce the man-hours and costs by approximately 50%, in addition to reducing the potential life risk that is posed by manual inspection of high-tension lines,” the state government said, adding that the project is expected to be scaled up soon.
Commenting on the development, Jayesh Ranjan, principal secretary for IT and industries said, “Telangana is one of the leading states in leveraging drones across various use-cases, and the inspection of towers for TS-TRANSCO is one of the most innovative of them. ”