The Electricity Company of Ghana
(ECG) has taken delivery of 15 drones to provide effective monitoring and
auditing of the company’s networks to ensure more efficient services to clients
in line with modern trends.
The deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
in the company’s operations is meant to curb the vegetation interference in the
network, as well as identify weak spots on the networks for prompt
rectification.
Consequently, engineers of the company are currently
undergoing training at the company’s training school in Tema to be able to
operate the drones.
The first batch of 50 engineers
completed their training yesterday.
At the closing ceremony of the first training
workshop in Tema yesterday, the Managing Director of ECG, Mr. Kwame
Agyeman-Budu, expressed optimism that the inclusion of the drone system in
ECG’s operations would improve efficiency, reliability of power supply to
customers, modernise its operations, and position the company to become a
leading utility service provider.
The Wingtra Drones, supplied and
serviced by Sahara Natural Resources, can last an hour in flight and travel as
far as eight kilometres while still in contact with the control tablet, which
records information and videos for later reference.
On the average, each region will be given two drones
to assist in the operational duties.
Vital tools
Mr. Agyeman-Budu intimated that
ECG stood to benefit greatly from the unmanned aerial vehicles as artificial
intelligence, including drones, were rapidly becoming vital tools in the
operations of transmission and distribution utilities because of their ability
to provide access to difficult locations on power lines.
He said it would provide routine technical
inspections in the power network to identify defects, right of way inspections
of overhead lines to identify vegetation encroachment.
He said it would also efficiently facilitate thermal
inspections of the network to identify hot spots, verification of work done by
bush clearing and tree cutting contractors, route mapping for construction of
new lines, as well as trouble-shooting of faulted portions of the network to
locate faults for isolation on overhead lines.
Additionally, it would provide access to difficult locations
on power lines for purposes of carrying out inspections without shutting down
the lines and creating outages.
Another benefit of the use of the drones, Mr. Agyeman-Budu
indicated, was that it would reduce the risk of injury to technical staff, and
lower the cost of carrying out inspections by using aerial thermal cameras.
“In addition to all these, the deployment of the drones would
reduce the time frame of carrying out inspections in the power system.
“Now activities which could take days to execute could be
done within minutes by the drones,” Mr. Agyemang-Badu said.
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