Leveraging Drones to Increase Safety and Productivity

AES has pioneered approaches to inspection using remotely piloted aircraft systems, commonly known as drones. Inspection using drones reduces the need for our people to work at height and minimizes their risk of exposure to high voltage electricity. These significantly safer inspections, when performed by professional operators using commercial-grade drones, have also enabled proactive maintenance by more quickly, more accurately, and more comprehensively identifying repairable issues before they become operational or safety concerns.

We have successfully leveraged drones and advanced robotics at more than 60 of our locations and across seven strategic use cases, leading to the avoidance of more than 1,000 hours of hazardous work. Our use of drones has also proven beneficial in a variety of other applications such as environmental monitoring and measurement of fuel stockpiles for production-flow optimization. These initiatives have helped us define our strategic roadmap for deploying emerging and innovative technologies across our portfolio to efficiently monitor and manage assets without compromising safety.

The AES Buffalo Gap wind farm in Texas uses drones to perform inspection of wind turbine blades. For its hundreds of wind turbines, each blade must be inspected at least once a year during their average 20-year lifespan, with greater frequency during the first year of operation to evaluate manufacturing defects, and after severe weather events and lightning strikes. Performing routine turbine blade inspection using a drone (a remotely controlled helicopter, in this case) has shown to significantly reduce hours of hazardous work, reduce expenses related to conventional methods that involve hoisting technicians at height, and provide higher-quality imagery than ground-based methods involving telephoto scopes.

In Brazil, AES Tietê created a specialized reservoir management department, which uses long-range fixed-wing drones (remotely controlled airplanes, in this case) along with underwater bathymetry, satellite imagery, LIDAR, and GIS software to achieve comprehensive monitoring and cataloging of its reservoir assets. Comparative analysis of image and topological data over time enables AES people to detect and quickly respond to issues and irregularities such as land erosion, invasive plants, sedimentation, and human occupation. AES further uses these integrated technologies to monitor the surrounding environment, which allows for methodological reforestation, management of ecological balance, and our continual efforts to preserve endangered species.

Looking ahead, we see many opportunities, ranging from improved software capabilities to process and analyze the data captured by drones, better automation and user interfaces, and improved sensors with the resolution to discover critical defects as small as a hairline crack. As we seek to provide the energy and infrastructure solutions our customers truly need, AES will continue to be a pioneer in the adoption of these emerging technologies to increase safety and productivity.

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