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Why automation, and drones may keep the lights on at your house in a storm!

One of the things that interest me is using and providing technology solutions for problems. One of the jobs that recently transitioned from human outdoors, to human indoors is the Drone management system for verifying pipelines. The reality of watching and checking a pipeline is that in the past, ten works could over a week, cover about 20 miles of pipeline. That meant that the overall cost of the pipeline was increased because they had to have more humans walking the pipeline. Plus, as noted by many spills over the last 30 years, the rate of failure was high enough that it was an issue. Now with a drone, two things can happen. The drones working for human reduces errors.

The same is true for electrical lines and phone lines. The drone operated by an educated human (what to look for) can cover more ground. This allows the operator of the drone to dispatch repair crews more effectively. Breaks and issues are noted, and because of the GPS settings of the drone, the dispatch goes right to the problem. That reduces the time repair crews spend trying to find the problem. The other very interesting thing is that it allows for more overall repair crews. This means that the company can deal with larger and more difficult outages quickly. You wouldn’t fly the drone in bad weather, but you can fly the drone once the storm is passed.

We often don’t sen crews out until there is an outage.

Both of these things are great examples of how technology and automation can help people. The other thing that you will see more and more is the use of drones when trying to find people. An operator in a building can fly a drone, 200, 2000, or even 12000 miles away. They can quickly be using the drone to cover a lot of ground. With infrared cameras, they can see a human being at night.

The cool thing is that automation and technology and help people be more effective in their jobs.

  • Question of

    did you know that power, phone and other utilities have crews out in bad storms?

    • Yes
    • No
  • Question of

    Do you ever stop and thank the people making sure you lights are on?

    • Yes
    • No

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What do you think?

13 Points

Written by DocAndersen

One fan, One team and a long time dream Go Cubs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

30 Comments

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  1. Q: DID YOU KNOW THAT POWER, PHONE AND OTHER UTILITIES HAVE CREWS OUT IN BAD STORMS?
    Yes (5 votes) – 71%
    No (2 votes) – 29%
    Q: DO YOU EVER STOP AND THANK THE PEOPLE MAKING SURE YOU LIGHTS ARE ON?
    Yes (4 votes) – 57%
    No (3 votes) – 43%

  2. That is great that there are workers like that. In fact, when we had a problem with Internet connections here they sent a whole crew that spent the entire day checking on the cables and got it all fixed up and now no more problems

    1

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