Keeping the Lights On: How Drones Keep Substations Operational, Compliant, and Secure

Substations are critical to all utilities and remote operations at these locations are enhancing their efficiency, safety, and reliability. This session will delve into the benefits of implementing remote monitoring at substations, highlighting its importance in assessing asset conditions, meeting compliance, and enhancing security applications. Attendees will gain insights into how remote operations reduce the need for on-site personnel, lower operational costs, and improve the overall resilience of the power grid. Through practical examples and case studies, we will illustrate the transformative impact of remote operations, ensuring continuous and reliable utility service.

My name is Christina Park. I am the senior director of energy strategy here at Skydio. And this is the session, keeping the lights on, how drones keep substations operational, compliant, and secure.

So here with you today, as I said, I lead energy strategy here at Skydio, and I'm going to let each of the speakers introduce themselves.

Good day. I'm, Mark Christensen. I'm a manager for SoCal Edison, and I help with their, substation station apparatus and maintenance. So pleasure to be here and see you all.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Alex Gertley here with American Electric Power out of, Corpus Christi, Texas, and, I take care of, substation, equipment as far as transformers, circuit breakers, failures, and warranty work, and all of that.

So Good morning.

How about those donuts out there?

Woo. Tia Butler, the manager of the unmanned systems group for Dominion Energy.

Kind of unique how our our structure is is we we fall under corporate security, for our unmanned systems group. So anything land, air, and sea, our our group is responsible for.

Great. Thank you, gentlemen. So this is kind of our agenda for today. I think substations when I think about utilities I used to work at a utility.

No matter where you, lie, whether you're in generation, transmission, or distribution, you need a substation. You need to connect it in order to get the power to flow. Right? So, we were looking at some of the major use cases that we face in substation optimization, and we're really fortunate here today to have, these three gentlemen representing their utilities and how they're using drones in asset management, compliance, and security.

So we're really just gonna kinda go through these three topics. So first, I wanna lay the groundwork a little bit. So in twenty twenty four, we did a little research. The bulk electric system or the bulk power system is forecasted to endure the highest demand in energy growth, energy growth rates, of the decade.

So looking back, I I think we all know I mean, I bought my first EV this year. Actually, my husband bought it and didn't tell me. But, you know, when we run our our, generation and all those things, the loads that we need to generate are just higher than they were fifty years ago. Everyone's got an electric vehicle.

Everyone's, population density has increased. A lot of I mean, Californians in the room, right? I grew up in California. You know, Modesto, Sacramento, those were very rural areas when I was growing up.

And now they're just like hot places to be with real estate skyrocketing. So I think as we keep up with the times, utilities are facing a very unique challenge.

And increased need really means there's less room for mistakes. But if we look at the numbers, reliability is dropping. So if we look at from twenty thirteen to twenty twenty three, there's a seventy seven percent increase in SADI.

And if we look at the NERC, noncompliance penalties in twenty twenty three, it really doubled in the last decade. So we have millions of dollars. So as we go through and see the importance of this, we're gonna start with asset management. So here's Mark.

Alright. Thank you.

I'll click for you.

Okay. Very good. Yeah. So I went around the room and started meeting some people, and it's really neat to see the diverse group we have here with different industries.

And I think what we're gonna cover here will cover and transcend these different industries as you'll see. But, a little bit about my utility, SoCal Edison, and in particular, our substation department, we're responsible for around eight hundred and fifty substations with all of the maintenance, construction, test work. And then we also support our generation group with the substations that fall within their AOR. So we do support that group with their maintenance and inspection programs and oversight.

We have about two thousand substation transformers, which is kind of a way us substation geeks gauge the size of, utilities.

So and about twelve thousand substation circuit breakers. So quite a bit to take care of, and, you'll see some, stories here in a minute on successes we've had with our drone inspection program.

Now more than ever, we're seeing advanced maintenance and inspection technologies become available off the shelf, and there's a lot of different examples.

And, of course, they reduce labor, they reduce risk, and increase our safety, and most importantly, the frequency at which we can make inspections at a very affordable rate. And that that's, for me, key because that is what really energizes your business case cost benefit analysis.

So in my, description here, we're gonna be talking about transmission substations and sub transmission substations.

There's also distribution substations.

But the transmission and sub transmission substations, for those that don't know, they're just a lot larger. Things are higher up off the ground and spread apart.

And so when you have these elevated substation components, for years and years now, we're just relegated to kind of do our inspections by looking up and seeing what we see.

So I'm gonna play captain obvious here, but we know weather has physical effects on equipment, those that manage factories, those that manage substations and other assets.

Heating and cooling makes materials expand and contract.

In our substation space, we see that when little cotter pins just magically crawl their their way out of our clevises.

And you can even see it at your house. Some of those, some of you who have the wooden fascia board, sometimes you'll see nails just magically start pushing their way out of the your home's fascia board. And those types of physical movements that can be caused just by the heating and cooling effect on our components is is quite drastic.

Then you have UV, you know, ultraviolet rays the way I envision those is those are just chewing up the atomic structures of our seals and other materials that aren't quite permanent.

And then lastly is wind. You know, wind effects, the not only the movement, but also some of the vibration effects that happen from wind. And that's the story that I'm gonna start off with here.

So, this first picture that you're seeing here, imagine that you're a substation inspection or inspector, and you show up at a substation, and you look up, and you notice this conductor spacer appears to maybe be loose on the ends and then obviously has been causing some abrasion on that cable. You see some cables separated.

And you look and you you might see another location.

And the chances are that this is the only location where this effect is happening is probably slim and none. So now all of a sudden, you see this condition and you have an inspection that's large. You've got maybe at a substation fifty to one hundred of these conductor spacers that you now need to go inspect and probably do it in short order. You know?

It's it's a condition you wanna get on top of. So you got two two options. Number one, the same as it's always been. You go out there in the crushed rock.

For those that don't know, in substations, we have very thick crushed rock, and it's difficult to walk on. It's an uneven surface. It's like walking in a riverbed where you're just, you know, just not easy.

Besides that, you know, you'll go out there and and you'll be staring up at that, conductor spacer with a camera, with a zoom lens. You'll maybe get a couple pictures of it and then walk twenty yards to the side and try to get another angle of it. And then when you're done with that one, like I said, you got fifty more to do, and that is very difficult. That takes a long time.

And your second option, obviously, is gonna be using a drone, having a drone program where if you've got an entire operating bus, say, four, three football fields, four football fields long, you could have your drone deployed, and now that inspector might be able to sit in an air conditioned vehicle with line of sight of that drone and be able to complete the inspections of, say, an entire operating bus and be doing it in a very efficient manner and then safe and ergonomically correct manner. Because anyone that's done these inspections knows it's not comfortable when you're just staring up for, you know, all day.

So there's that one, and and let's let's take a look at this next one here. So this is a zoomed in picture of a high voltage disconnect, and it's a gang operated center brake disconnect, which I'll show you in a minute what it looks like zoomed out. But these disconnects are just giant switches, and they move. They operate. They open up just like a switch should.

And as they operate, you've got some pivots and some movement.

On the ends of the disconnect, we have cables connected, and that has to pivot because those cables aren't gonna swing as the disconnect operates. So there's a couple pivot bolts there. And as you can see on the bottom right hand of the screen, we see where one of those pivot bolts is backing out. Now that was spotted with the x ten Skydio drone, and we were able to do a large amount of inspections on these particular disconnects when we noticed that extent of condition.

Now if you don't have a drone where you can get up and you can make that inspection, you're looking at renting man lifts. You're looking at the time it takes to get your crews out there up in a man lift. You've gotta ground the man lift for safety.

And then you might even need an outage to be able to get up in that elevated position. Whereas with the drone, again, you can take this situation that it has just created a long list of inspections now, and you can execute those real fast, safely, and more effectively because you're getting a lot more data since you're able to cover the top side of all these assets.

So the next picture will be this disconnect zoomed out, kinda give you an idea of what that looks like, with our, this is a two twenty kV group operated disconnect.

And so if you don't make these inspections, and let's say you have a condition that exists, there's a possibility that we can go to the next slide, that this happens.

So this is a disconnect that has those pivot bolts that have worked off, and that lead has come detached.

And, typically, when you have a lead detached like that, you have a loud noise and an arc flash. And in substations, we don't like hearing loud noises and arc flashes. So this is an alarming sight to walk up on, but this is what, again, the type of event that will trigger a wide range of inspections. Because the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna ask what make and model disconnects are these.

You You know? And you're gonna find that out. You're gonna find out, okay. Well, where were these installed?

And you're gonna have all those on a list that you now have, a bit of an urgency to get out and put your eyes on. So great value there. We can go on to the next one. Now this is an interesting one, kinda talking about the value of creating a visual as built database.

We we all know of our print databases with engineering designs, and we go there and we can reference things. And engineers use those as a basis for creating new designs.

But the idea of having our drone data available to our stakeholders for different uses, One could be emergent response.

Look at those three photos there, and it kinda gives you an idea of the history of how we can get, like, an aerial view, whether that be for, project planning, engineering, or emergent response.

This one here, let's say, hypothetically, you had a transformer fail in this very tight quartered substation.

We would get on a phone call and start trying to plan the logistics of getting this transformer replaced. And looking at these first two pictures, it's just not that effective to have a comfortable feel of the room, the space where you might store the the new transformer if you wanna bring it on-site.

And, of course, on the third, you can see it's such a much higher resolution picture. You could almost just zoom in and see little individual items that might be sitting in the way of, let's say, your heavy movers pulling in the new transformer or whatnot. So emergent project response is a huge benefit when you are trying to come up with a quick game plan to move some large things out and move some large things back in. Then there's the engineering aspect. You know, engineers, sometimes they don't quite correlate what's on that that print to the physical world.

And having these images available to them not only might help keep their engineering prints more accurate, but it can also spur design ideas. You know, with engineering, when you have some sort of large task of redesign and moving sections of an old switch rack and you've got to somehow find where you're gonna put a new compact switch rack, it can help with that. And then lastly, project planning. Your construction planners can look at this for much the case of the emergent responses, just kinda coming up with a good cadence for the project plan.

Go to the next slide. And this is the last slide here. Just touching on what we saw earlier this morning and just blown away by I don't know about you, but one of the couple of things that was always in the back of my mind that created some hesitation about, a drone in a box or a dock was those high winds and rain, obviously. So seeing that this morning really kinda unlocks my mind and thinking, hey. These these are are ready now. These are, gonna hold up in those difficult environments. And then the value add for these, again, is having those at those remote key substation locations.

And, most importantly, like I mentioned earlier, is the frequency of inspections as you employ these and you're able to do a much more frequent inspection on your assets, that becomes the new standard, and that becomes the gauge at which you calculate that benefit cost analysis.

And it will, of course, energize that, business case to further enable adoption of these new technologies such as drones.

Well, thank you so much, Mark. Really appreciate you sharing your knowledge here with us today, as the substation manager for Southern California Edison. So, there's lots more to talk about with asset management, but we do have a time limit. So just wanted to give a bit of a snippet. But another important topic for substations, is compliance. So I think any of us who have been subject to NERC, FERC, our our utilities commissions is there's a very set set of, list of requirements for compliance and not meeting them leads to consequences. So here to share, his story, for representing American Electric Power is Alex Kirtley.

Hey, everyone. Thanks, Christina.

Hold it hold it to hold the mic.

Appreciate the introduction again. So, Alex Curley again here with, American Electric Power. And, speaking a little bit on compliance like Christina said, you can go to the next slide, is, our FAC08, which some folks may not understand what it is, but it's our facility ratings.

Basically, how we work with our engineering teams on, you know, what equipment that we have out in the stations, just like Mark said before about, you know, transformers, breakers, disconnects, and conductors, everything of that nature. So, we have to go out and basically verify, all of this equipment in the substations just to make sure that everything jives with what engineering has, planned out there. You know what I mean? Like, as far as installed, what they're tracking just to make sure everything, is what it is out in the field. So rating wise, we are in compliance.

So, we did have a little bit of violations there. I you can see on here that, even since the inception in two thousand and seven, there was a hundred and ninety eight violations and a little over four million in penalties.

And, that all just goes back to those, ratings and reliability and operation limits. But, go ahead and go to the next slide.

So the challenges that we have with these FACCO eight walk downs that I just brought up is, you know, we're understaffed trying to get to all of these sites and then, verify all the information. I know, Mark had some good info on those, pivot bolts and stuff. Obviously, getting a drone up in the air is a lot more effective for us, less time consuming, and, you know, less man less manpower when it comes to just sending one drone pilot out there to verify all of our assets. Everything in the air as far as, you know, disconnects, in a lot of our stations, hundred and thirty eight kV, three forty five, and all the way up to seven hundred and sixty five KV or just what we have in our system.

So a lot of that equipment is so far up in the air that even some binoculars, you you're not really gonna see nameplates and things of that nature in order to verify what is there. So, that is one of our biggest challenges on our, Facu8 walk downs and how a lot of, a lot of that has been mitigated with the drone usage that we've been using in our system.

Next one.

So as you can see with some of that equipment here, I've got some depiction of name plates off of one of our motor operator switches, and, you can see, basically, the quality. This was taken with, one of our x ten drones. So you can see that the quality is there. You can get right up on what you need.

And below that is, some information on our VeriFAC system that we use, for our FACO eight verifications that, you know, us as pilots. We go out there in order to verify everything at the station. So we'll have our VeriFAC system on our tablets and, bring up what engineer is saying they're expecting to be out at the substations. And then, you know, we'll use the drone to verify that or say, hey.

This isn't here. Then, you know, that's when we catch the issues of, like, a switch might be wrong or didn't get updated correctly in the system, and then we can update our prints and everything so everything is compliant.

Here's some more examples that we have.

This one I love the most that, we've been working with, our MEPI team, on tools for checking conductors and stuff like that because that is, again, part of our FATCO eight verification.

So this two thousand k c m conductor is, you know, thirty plus feet in the air. And, again, this was x ten footage here, from one of our drones that you see. You can get right up on there and see the stamping on the, conductor connector there. So, another example of our VeriFAC system there on basically how engineering shows us to verify that in our system as well. So okay.

So up here, I've got some examples of other use cases, of course, not just for our FACCO eight compliance, but on another side of compliance as far as, you know, reliability in the standpoint because, you're looking at the top right is, one of the disconnect switches, you know, that Corey had showed you all in the demo earlier at one of my sites there in Corpus. So, this is actually some footage that I took off of one of my sites, out of my Victoria, Texas area where you can see the hot spot on that disconnect. Same type of disconnect is what Corey showed you all there earlier, but you can see the anomalies. And that's, x ten radiometric thermal imaging there as well. So, it does not denote, you know, what the delta is in there. But when you are flying, you can see that information in there so you can tell what the temperature difference is in there. And, some of the other stuff you see in here I got for some examples.

Bottom left is actually, the physical picture of what's on the top right so you can kinda see where the hot spot is. You're gonna tell that's kinda at the end of the fingers on that disconnect so, you can spot where it's problematic.

Bottom right, of course, is going to be, one of my SF six interrupters on a disconnect switch out there. Those ones are much more difficult to get a hold of as far as, you know, making sure when we have upcoming projects, you know, I get engineering teams to reach out and say, what kind of disconnect is over here? Because we wanna upgrade lines and, upgrade substations and stuff. Well, again, our old system may not always be up to date and which is why we're working on it with our FACA eight verifications.

So you can fly the drone out there and get all the information that you need off of that interrupter, which what you're looking at here is looking directly up at the sky. That's the top of the interrupter where that nameplate is. So that's thirty plus feet up in the air. And unless you can go over there and, like Mark was saying, take an outage, you know, get a main lift, get somebody over there to safely just get information off of it when the drone, you know, it takes ten, fifteen minutes to just go out there, sit in a air conditioned truck because, you know, Texas for us, it's hundred plus degrees in the summertime. So, you know, again, you're keeping your guys safe as well.

Top left picture is actually, another portion of what I do, for AP is, pre engineering.

We've got a picture of a transformer here in which I actually, do pre engineering on certain stuff. You know?

The transformers each year, we have to do maintenance on all of our equipment every year. So, once engineering picks which ones that we need to do for the year, I'll go out and do a pre engineering and go look all those over and then try to preemptively, you know, order, you know, if I realize that needs bushings or anything like that. So, the drones, now help me with that as well because what did take me and at least another person, to go around and do this as far as even just holding a hot stick with a GoPro on top out in the heat and stuff. It was excruciating to do. So the drone, I just, again, pop it up, get nameplate pictures off of all of my bushings and everything of that nature. So, that also helps us with our compliance and reliability there as as we keep all of our equipment in compliance.

So that brings me into our program timeline of where we're at with drone in a box. So, we did adopt, you know, the g twenty seven docks, with the x two drones. And, here we've got kind of a little timeline of, what was going on with that as far as early incipient stages of testing the docks, all the way up to, you know, kinda where we're at now with phase one, phase two, where we purchased quite a few of these docs. We've got eighteen in my AEP footprint in which, if you don't know much about AEP, we do cover at least eleven states.

So I've got eighteen docs, five of which are in Texas, and then the rest are over in our APPCO region in Virginia and West Virginia. So, of course, that kinda goes into our BB loss map. I know we worked on BB loss waivers, with the Skydio folks. They've been a great help on getting us going with that because, yes, we have the docs.

But then it's kinda like if you don't have, a set drone, program in place for your company yet, you know, they they're can assist you with that, you know, because we're like, okay. We got docs. Well, what do you mean waivers? Where do we go from there?

So, you know, they're here to assist as well, throughout that whole process and get you in the air. So, looking at this map, our b v loss map that kinda coincides with, the eighteen docs that we do have, was phase one and phase two. And then, we just look to expand up on that. So, we recently are working on the b v loss waivers to, take x x two docks from outside of our substation, because they're just kinda limited right now within our company to within the substation perimeters.

And, we're gonna expand upon that, you know, and go up to three miles outside of our substations within our right of ways to cover, you know, our critical breaker infrastructure as far as transmission lines or any distribution lines going in and out of there. So, that's kinda what we're looking at on our next plan with our docks.

Great. Thanks so much, Alex. It's really interesting. And I think for AUP, what's really exciting is, I think your drone program really started in station technical services, and the AUP footprint, if I'm not mistaken, has what, five thousand substations or some ungodly number that's very, very large.

So I think when we look at that FAC o eight, compliance requirement for five thousand substations across eleven states, and the manpower that you need to actually go I mean, Texas is just so large. So even within Texas, being able to get from one side to the other, it's almost the situation of having your back against the wall. Right? And I think that is really what we're seeing with utilities leaning into technology, that when it becomes obvious that the way we've always done things is resulting in fine after fine after fine, that, there is a need, for change and an appetite for it.

And we're really excited to partner with you guys.

So now into the third part, I'm excited to introduce TF Butler from Dominion Energy, who has a background in security, I think, prior to the utility space. But I thought it was really interesting within Dominion that the, drone program sits within physical security. So I think across utilities, drone program sometimes sit in asset management, sometimes in aviation, sometimes in innovation.

But I think Dominion is really interesting that it sits in physical security, and they have a lot of great success stories to share here. So welcome, TF.

Thank you, Christina.

So how many folks in the room on a daily base operate inside of a substation?

Show of hands of how many people have been in a substation.

Right? So requirements to go into a substation. Right? FR clothing.

You know, the the number one rule the first time I went in a substation was keep your arms down. K? What can you get close to and what you can't get close to?

So is that the environment that we'd want our security going in on a normal basis to walk around the substation? And the answer is no.

The the common denominator here that we heard, you know, this morning, especially in the conversation is is the force multiplier.

Right? And what the drone could be used for in multiple different scenarios and different job applications with inside of one of these facilities and where we're looking to go, you know, on true automated functions. You know, right now, most of our b v loss waivers are you can operate remotely, but you have to watch the operation. If we're looking at gauges routinely and we're looking at fence lines and we're looking at other things, I think the FAA probably has a little appetite to get away from that.

You know, we can use those those flights where we're actually gunshot detection goes off at one of our substations or we have an intrusion, or maybe we have someone that doesn't log out of a substation. Right? These are all things that are happening with this in environment. So you got the lone worker that's out there.

If we're able to task that drone to go do those other things other than that repeated every single time flight inside of a substation where there is no one there and it's secure, then there probably is gonna be some degree of adjustment on some of these truly automated, you know, dock remote operations. Right? So that's kinda where I think that everyone wants to kinda get to versus to having to rely on a command center and having operators watch paint dry over and over and over again. Nothing happens.

Right? So we look at companies like Skydio and trying to, you know, hold them accountable to make sure the technology is gonna do what it's supposed to do, and then they operate on themselves to make sure they have it set up the correct way in order to ensure that that's happening the way it needs to happen. Right? So the the pictures before you right now are stow stations before.

Obviously, this one's under construction.

And then you see the one after is where we have a really super high fence, that it can't be penetrated, you know, you know, by by bullets. Right? But what's open on a substation?

Right? So these threats will come from the top down, not necessarily from the outside in. Right? So you can go to the next.

So I I have a a picture here, and it's it's kind of interesting. We have a housing complex near a substation. Shocker.

Right?

Some of these are out in remote areas. Some of them are in communities.

This particular community here has a, a tendency to have some, some unsavory things going on after dark and where potentially some friends may be shooting at other friends and the backdrop may be your substation.

Right? So let's hit the, the next slide.

So you have to go out and document each one of these holes into the fence because this happens over and over and over repeatedly. Right?

So if I was able to, on a daily basis, go around the area perimeter fence of this location and look at what was going on after we've labeled these other penetrations through the fence. Right? So you're out there with a green laser. You're pointing it through the fence trying to get a trajectory of what could have got damaged from the stray bullet that went through your fence.

Right? And then being able to do that routine flight and go, are there any new holes today? Okay? So we we start broadening this whole perspective of what we're being able to see.

Next slide.

So you can see from a distance, we got multiple gunshots. Right? So you hear hear about this on the news, and we talk about some of these locations being in a remote area. Wow.

How what a concept to be able to give law enforcement a potential description of a vehicle or a direction of travel. Right? So by the time law enforcement, either the lone worker goes out there and discovers these holders the next day, or maybe you have gunshot detection, but your law enforcement's twenty minutes, fifteen minutes, depending on some of these rural areas. Right?

But if you're able to launch a drone, once that gunshot detection, I call it I mean, we talked about, you know, drones for first responders. Let's talk drones for first energy. Right? Like, it's the same concept.

The gunshot detection goes off in in your monitoring system. You launch the drone. Now you have visual on what's going on out there. Was it a reclosure?

Was it actually gunshots? Do you see anybody in the area? You know? So all those things really start building in.

You know? Worked a lot of cases in substations where, you know, copper is being stolen. Right? Like, repeatedly.

Can't move the cameras in the substation. Why? Because the regulatory part of it. Right? Can't focus it on the troughs where the where the copper is.

But if we had the ability to be able to be in the air and looking, that really the force multiplier there just speaks for itself. Next slide.

So who got a, who got a new rifle for Christmas?

And I I wanna make sure that this is the sites are just super accurate. Right? So what better thing to go look at as a if I hit that line, I know I'm good. I know that is quality quality equipment that I'm actually firing.

Right? So we have the gunshot detection. It may not have gone into the substation, but what's happening outside the substation in close proximity? Right?

So, again, another another image there, Christina. So you can see, well, somebody was successful in in actually hitting this, and, you know, we have we have some strands, you know, that are broken from that penetration.

Next slide.

So the other part of it is is substation construction progress. Right? From a security aspect, do you wanna know if you've got contractors on-site or you don't have them on-site? Do they call in?

Do they do the proper notification that they're there? Do they log out of that substation? Right? We have the ability to look at that, but then again, you know, Matt's in the room here on our transmission side and electric transmission.

They wanna see what construction process is. I mean, what's the progress today? Do they show up to work? Do they not?

Right? We talked earlier. You were talking about mapping in that great image. Right? Take the drone, make you an ortho mosaic, low altitude.

You've got all kinds of details there that you never had before to do those plannings. You know? Do we have the the proper thing? Are we looking for a component for, you know, talking about assets?

What's in that substation? What did we use there versus somewhere else? So really quickly, you start really identifying so many multiple uses. You know?

I'm like, why is it taking us this long to get to where we are now? Right?

Next slide.

The other part of it is too is, you know, outside that substation, you know, here's a prime example, and this is the case I actually worked, when I was in law enforcement. You know, we we have a major substation in a major area near some server farms under construction, and our contract equipment's getting destroyed while they're trying to build this. Next slide, I'll you know?

Is is this an intentional sabotage to our project? I mean, nobody wants to fill out the paperwork to alert the regulators.

Gunshots into a substation are bad word. Nobody wants to be making and doing that reporting. Right? There's a requirement to report and a time limit that you have to do that.

So trying to determine if if this is neighborhood kits, is this someone who is against a project that utility is trying to build? Those are things you really need to understand because do I need a higher security? Do I need to put two drone in a boxes out there? Right?

Like, we need to build on time, on budget because there is a requirement for that power. So having all these little pieces and parts of this part of the security of it, we often really kinda forget about it, don't really pay attention till it happens. And then, you know, going forward, is that something where you wanna put in your project? We want to have a drone.

We wanna be able to remotely look at that and then wait for it. We can hit all these categories going down the line. So I think that's that's something that you kinda have to refocus a little bit, we're doing that currently on our solar projects. You know, our our company, looked to US manufacturers about five years ago, we were told, you need in the utility business, good luck with that.

We partnered with Skydio. They came out. They listened to what we needed. You know? The x ten is a prime example of pretty much the list that we went down from day one going, the x two is great, but and that dock, it's not waterproof.

What are we gonna do with it? Right? And then the waterproof dock comes out. So all these things working with with vendors who are willing to work with us on our problems to help us solve those problems, And one of one of our company is is, you know, efficient, reliable, and increasingly cleaner energy.

Right? That's what we we we have dedicated our services to our community that we serve. Right? Because that that's who's paying our bills.

Right? So we owe it to them to do these things, work smarter, not harder. And and I think that's really the the the big takeaway, you know, today, seeing all the great things, you know, even from the law enforcement side. I mean, I would have died to have that, you know, in my previous career.

It's like just what doors that opens up, right, for the safety of everybody. And everybody we're we're our brother's keeper. You know, everybody wants to go home safe, and and I just see that as part of this this equation here. I don't think I have anything else in there.

Yeah. Thanks so much, TF. Your perspective is so valuable, given the the diversity of your own career, before you even got to the utility. So, we really appreciate all three of you. I think you've really highlighted three use cases within the substation space that sound, very, very different, but at the same time, it all, adds into substation optimization. And I just wanted to show this quote, I think, by the FERC chairman, Rich Glick. The security and reliability of the nation's electric grid is one of FERC's top priorities.

And this this came out after all the substation, shootings, at the end of last year. In light of the increasing number of recent reports of physical attacks on our nation's infrastructure, it's important that we fully and clearly review the effectiveness of our existing physical security standard to determine whether additional improvements are necessary to safeguard, the BPS. So I think that, when those those reports went out and we kinda saw, you know, the number of customers who were out, how long they were out of power. I I joke around about this because I worked for a utility for sixteen years, but I only call my own utility when my power goes out.

Right? And and complain about it. And so I think that for the sake of our customers, we owe it to them to really keep our substation secure, and to keep them compliant and safe. So, really appreciate everyone joining us today.

We're going to actually take a Q and A now. So if you have any questions for any of our panelists specifically or generally, if you could raise your hand, and then we will have a microphone coming out. So if you could just wait until the microphone comes to you to speak into it for your question, that would be much appreciated.

So, let's have a gentleman back there.

Microphone's coming to you.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. A lot of really good, insights and the stories that you had. I was curious if you can comment at all about your inspection strategies.

Are you basically just training your inspectors to fly a drone, or are you having drone pilots come out and capture imagery and then getting that imagery in front of inspectors later on?

And then are you using any kind of AI or anything to help people review the data later on?

Great. Thank you. So we'll just, I think you guys can actually each answer this if you like.

Okay. I'll start. Now I'm not a part of the leadership and expert team of SoCal Edison's drone program, but the answer to all those questions is yes, yes, and yes. So we're we're doing a mix of all of that. And we have our leaders and experts here today, so I can introduce you to them afterwards.

And, we can share best practices. That's one thing that this is good for is networking with other utilities and other industries even, sharing best practices. You might learn a thing or two from us. And most importantly, we wanna take your good ideas and take them back and use them.

But, yeah, we're we're doing a mix of all those.

I'd say it's the same thing for us here with AP.

You know, we do have dedicated pilots, to running our x tens and dock operations and things of that nature. And it's all folks that, we kinda took out of our STS, which is our station technical services group, to grow our pilot program because we are the guys that are kind of working in our substations, working with the equipment, and have the backgrounds, to know what to look for on all of that equipment as well. So pairing that with, you know, the ability to have some AI programs out there, especially like, I was working with our MEPI team on that AI tool when it comes to verifying equipment and stuff from the drone data, that we pull and then incorporate that way, then, that helps out immensely as well with time consumption.

I got the three yeses. Right? So we we we're doing all of the above.

You know, on our electric transmission group, we actually have dedicated pilots, and there's some value there, versus having a vendor come in.

They're familiar with our system. They understand our system. And, you know, relationships are really important, you know, and and and there's a development of respect for that too. So, you know, instead of getting the call on Friday that that's a priority, you know, response, maybe it's not.

So, you know, having that ability to have those internal assets and those internal pilots, whether it's stock operations or or, you know, x ten, x twos, s two pluses.

You know, all of those, really, really lend to having that kinda rounded, overview.

Thank you. And I think if I could say one thing on top of that to your AI point, we are excited this afternoon from two thirty to four thirty. There is, there are many hands on demos outside. But one thing that's important to us at Skydio is really understanding what you need.

I think it's one thing to be able to capture the data that you were never able to get, but it's another thing to think that someone's gonna look through ten thousand photos to find the twenty that matter. So there are many AI partners that are out there. We have Levitas, BuzzSolutions, Optelos, Meppi, which is Mitsubishi, PowerEye, and Raptor Maps. So these five vendors, amongst many, are actually here, at Ascend, and they will have booths out there.

And what they'll show is, what we call it is flight to insight. So there is a station out there where you can remotely fly at AUP in the substation and see how the dock works, see how remote flight deck works. And the idea is the data that you just captured, you go to the next station, feed it in, get the insight, see how easy it is to push the button, to read the gauge, to get the digital reading, to see what pole is leaning, to see what, cotter pin is hanging out. Right?

So I think each of these vendors are spectacular. They have a very similar but different platform, and you'll be able to see what the differences are. I think many of our speakers up here have already worked with some of these vendors in t and d or in substation applications. So definitely feel free to check check them out.

But they are here today, and they'll be out there this afternoon.

Great. I think we had another question here.

Yeah. Yes. So you kinda just touched on it. I was just gonna follow-up and ask about what types oh, sorry. I was supposed to wait for the mic.

Could you just repeat the Yeah.

I'm sorry.

You kind of already touched on it. I was just gonna ask that we hear a ton about DFR integrations and collecting the data and what to do with the data. But I was gonna ask if, like, what's how do you guys use the data afterwards? What does that look like in loading it?

And, like, if what is Skydio missing? What do you wish we had? All that kind of stuff. So if anybody has more to say on that, that's that's great.

But I know we also just talked about it a little bit.

So Do you guys have anything that you wanna add to that?

Or I think again, I can't stress this enough.

Work with, you know, the vendors. Right? Because they don't know what you need and vice versa. Right?

Engineers, great people, very smart, very intelligent, but may not be what you need on the back end. And I think we find some some companies trying to push that. Right? And they they think they they know what you need, and that's not necessarily the truth.

So, you know, actually going down that road and going, nope. No, Seth. That's really not. We've had this discussion before.

And we've had that discussion. Right? And then understanding what your need is, and that way everybody wins. You know?

Utilities, we we don't typically compete against each other. Right? We all have the same need. So when you when you really look in this room, you know, PG and E is in the back, you know, with Kellen back in the back, you know, Garrett up here with Duke, we all talk.

We all have the same pain points. So really important, can't stress that enough, to talk, you know, with all these, you know, solutions that are out there.

Yeah. And I think to your point, I think when we look at the utility workflow, part of the reason that I was hired in was actually to bring a connection from the problems that exist out there in your world to the solutions that we're creating internally here at Skydio and really help bridge that. And I hopefully, that is what we're doing. I think that we've started with the AI, the post processing that you'll be able to see out there.

But our vision is really to look at your workflow from end to end and be able to integrate it all. Right? So in the similar way that you were able to see today with DFR Connect, for law enforcement, we hope to do that, on our road map for utilities. And really, it has to do with again, it's great to get all this data.

It has to get to the people who need it, and they need to be able to filter it down. Right? So that is really part of our vision. I think you'll see the post processing today.

In the future, we would like to see integrations into your work order management system, right, whether you're using Maximo, SAP.

We actually have integrations to Esri because we know a lot of people use Esri.

And we would love your feedback. I think that if there are platforms that you would like to see integrated to that you use as part of your, your workflow, we would love that feedback because we need to figure out what is the greatest priority and what's gonna affect the most people.

But I think that, you know, if I put my old utility hat back on, what we wanna do for you is reduce the amount of, extra paperwork, the amount of extra headache you have. I know everybody's procurement, departments are super, super fast. So when you have to deal with this robotics vendor and this sensor vendor and this analytics vendor and then NDA them all with each other, Then you go to your IT, who also, super, super fast, and say, I want all of this to work with each other.

And then you have everyone saying, I'm busy because I'm doing my day job, not your science project. And so I I've lived that pain, and I think that you're all laughing, so you have too. But that's something that we want to eliminate as much as possible for you here at Skydio. And through Skydio Extend, we're trying to take care of the integrations, the NDAs, a lot of that, so that we have one throat to choke, right? When you have a problem, you call one person, you can get an answer. And that's what we're trying to do for you.

And eliminate vaporware.

Yes. Any other questions? Yeah. Oh, thank you, Lamar. I think there's one gentleman over there.

It's a comment and a question. So I think physical security, you're talking about using dock for your perimeter sweeps and things like that. You have complementing technologies as well. You probably have radar systems, your camera systems, and everything else. Right?

How how those complementing each other, like when how do you determine when you use the dock for your perimeter sweeps and use the camera feed to analyze something? That's one question. And I have just a general question that I saw in the demo earlier in the in the morning about taking the counter readings from the breaker.

Now you have sensors deployed Again, similar in the similar context, you have these complementing technologies that are all already out there. How do you make a balance on, really, do you need to deploy a drone, or do you have a sensor that can just take the counter reading? Right? CBS light is there.

You could just use that sensor and pass that data to to your central, monitoring and diagnostic center or operations. So why do you need to deploy a drone to take the counter reading every time? And that's gonna make it more inefficient rather. So, just just want to take your, thoughts on that option cover of each each of these technology and how how to complement each other.

So you ever heard the term, if you've got one, you've got none?

Right? So even to your your question there, you know, even on gauges, right, would it hurt to have that second look? You know, I think we can talk about Three Mile Island as a prime example of that on what you see. Is that really what's happening? Right? So I think having that backup source to be able to verify the data that you're seeing to make sure it's correct is just another step in that process of of of making sure that you're doing everything possible with the technology you have.

You know, this morning, we talked about, you know, the DFR and drones for first responders and just kind of reflect back on that. You know, you got this this progression of how that works. Right? And to your point, how do you get those systems to talk to each other?

Right? And then once that gunshot detection goes off, what what is the the reaction to that? Right? So if there's a human involved in that and you've gotta sit there and actually watch that flight, How long is it gonna take that aircraft to get in the air?

Right? So those things become really important to really start dialing those down and reducing that time response from detection to response.

And I think there's some work to be done on that. Right? I think, you know, you know, working with Skydio and, you know, these having the doc live there and then how are we gonna integrate all those other systems that need to talk to each other is another element that that that obviously you know, we've got the platform now. Now we need to work with those other industry, you know, leaders and partners to be able to figure that part out. Right? So that's it.

And then as far as the counter example, I'm agreeing with you that that should all be digitized and data that can be captured through our, existing network and circuit breaker counters.

You know, those are so problematic at times. They were out quicker and quicker now, it seems, with the new ones. So, yeah, that's definitely something that would not be on the drone hit list for inspections. But as far as even the gauges as well, you know, more and more we're seeing everything get digitized and brought online.

So, yeah, there's a lot of opportunities to limit the amount of things that you actually need to spot with the drone, but there'll always be that really rich value that those drone inspections are gonna provide whether or not they're you know, for me, it's just, operator required. We're boots on the ground. I'm I'm doing work right now. We've got inspections right now.

We we need to get done, and and so we're we're not I'm not too focused on, you know, five years out, ten years out as far as future technology. I'm looking at, like, what can I bolt on this transformer right now to get me the info I need? You know?

But good comment.

Yeah. And I appreciate that question because I think, Parikh's from the New York Power Authority, which is where I came from. So, they have a very advanced program with monitoring and diagnostics already with IoT sensors. I think not everyone is there, in the same place.

But I think that, I wanna be clear that drones are one part of your journey to condition based maintenance. It's we're not saying at Skydio that if you have drones, you're gonna be able to achieve the whole thing. You're still going to need DJAs. You're still DGAs, not DJI.

DGAs. Digital Gas Analyzers. You're still going to need vibration sensors. You're still going to You don't need DJIs, just to be clear.

But you're going to need, IoT sensors. And I think it's really just a balance of saying, I wanna get a full view of what my assets are doing at any given time. And there are different ways to do that. I think where drones come in is because of the sensors that are out there, they're not sufficient.

So they can get you certain information you need, but there are other things that you just can't get. And by having a different vantage point, by having that thermal aerial sensor that moves, I think that takes away the pain of sensor deployment where you're buying permanent sensors, installing them, and then having to maintain them wherever they are. Like, that's really not sustainable. And so this is another tool in your toolbox, another sensor that you can install in your suite, in order to get to condition based maintenance.

So it is twelve twenty three. So in the to respect everybody's time, really appreciate the questions you have. I think the speakers are here. Oh, Mark actually wants to say something. Hang on.

Question for the crowd. No one answered it now, but one of the benefits of being here in person and having all these different industries is I would love to hear from other industries. You know, at Edison, we're always benchmarking with other electric utilities on their drone programs, but hearing that there's some manufacturing industry here with manufacturing plants, oil and gas oil and gas pipelines, maybe some other plants that I'm not thinking of right now. If if you all have some really unique uses that you're using drones for or some successes, I would love to hear that because it's not really often that I get to network with these other industries. So do please contact me after and tell me some interesting things.

Well, thank you to all of our speakers. Let's have a round of applause for them.