Outages & Safety

A Help­ful View:
KPUD flies drones to help crews iden­ti­fy issues quick­ly

In 2019, Klick­i­tat PUD adopt­ed the use of unmanned aer­i­al systems—more com­mon­ly known as drones—as part of a proac­tive main­te­nance pro­gram. Drones are used for infra­struc­ture and rights-of-way inspec­tions and out­age response. They help reduce risks, con­trol costs, increase effi­cien­cy and improve the over­all reli­a­bil­i­ty of our sys­tem.

KPUD pilots work year-round through­out our ser­vice ter­ri­to­ry, respond­ing to out­ages and inspect­ing the crit­i­cal infra­struc­tures that pro­vide pow­er, water and sew­er ser­vices to our cus­tomers. Inspec­tions take place in rur­al and incor­po­rat­ed areas.

The PUD attempts to noti­fy cus­tomers who may be affect­ed by sched­uled oper­a­tions. How­ev­er, many assess­ments are time-sen­si­tive, and noti­fi­ca­tions can­not always be com­plet­ed. In incor­po­rat­ed areas, KPUD also noti­fies the gov­ern­ing author­i­ty. Keep in mind that if KPUD does not have an accu­rate phone num­ber on file, we are not able to con­tact those cus­tomers.

KPUD’s drone pilots are cer­ti­fied under the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Administration’s Part 107 Small UAS pilot pro­gram. The rig­or­ous safe­ty qual­i­fi­ca­tions include more than 15 hours of flight train­ing and flight eval­u­a­tions. All pilots must fol­low KPUD pro­ce­dures for the oper­a­tion of drones. Sev­en mem­bers of the KPUD engi­neer­ing staff are FAA-cer­ti­fied for drone oper­a­tion.

KPUD’s dis­tri­b­u­tion and trans­mis­sion infra­struc­ture is com­prised of more than 30,300 poles and 2,200 miles of line, in some­times remote and dif­fi­cult-to-access areas. The remote loca­tions of many of these lines and the size of the struc­tures make it chal­leng­ing to get close inspec­tions of the crit­i­cal hard­ware from the ground.

Drones allow oper­a­tors to quick­ly obtain close-up, high res­o­lu­tion images of each struc­ture from many dif­fer­ent van­tage points. These images are reviewed in the field and by engi­neer­ing staff back in the office, where more time is spent on each image. If defi­cien­cies are found, they are pri­or­i­tized based on sever­i­ty, and the work is sched­uled for repair or replace­ment.

KPUD proac­tive­ly car­ries out veg­e­ta­tion man­age­ment along pow­er line rights-of-way. Drones have proven to be a valu­able asset when inspect­ing ROW. As part of our nor­mal infra­struc­ture inspec­tion process, we iden­ti­fy veg­e­ta­tion encroach­ment issues. Imagery is col­lect­ed, then loca­tions are iden­ti­fied and pri­or­i­tized for treat­ment.

We also use drones in our sched­uled cycle trim­ming pro­gram. KPUD col­lects imagery for areas that are sched­uled for treat­ment. Once treat­ment has occurred, we can recheck the ROW to con­firm treat­ment has been com­plet­ed.

Dur­ing storm out­ages, crews often must walk or snow­shoe along pow­er lines to find the exact loca­tion of dam­age to repair it. By using drones, the flight crew can access these same remote areas more safe­ly.

Staff can avoid poten­tial injury dur­ing storms or in rugged ter­rain by access­ing and inspect­ing infra­struc­ture with a drone. The oper­a­tor can send detailed infor­ma­tion to the office so ware­house staff can pull the prop­er mate­ri­als. Field crews can be dis­patched to the exact loca­tion of the prob­lem to make the nec­es­sary repairs.

By doing this, KPUD can more quick­ly iden­ti­fy the cause, repair the issue and restore pow­er to cus­tomers.

Not only does the pro­gram pro­vide cost sav­ings, it also pro­vides more detailed data for line crews to use. Drone oper­a­tors are involved with veg­e­ta­tion man­age­ment and help plan for line exten­sions in tim­bered areas.

Addi­tion­al­ly, we have deployed drones to help locate under­ground water leaks in KPUD-owned water sys­tems. Data is used to pro­vide visu­al aids to crews. This allows them to dis­cuss where work needs to be com­plet­ed with­out going to a remote site.

KPUD’s drone inspec­tion team will con­tin­ue mit­i­gat­ing risk and improv­ing effi­cien­cy and reli­a­bil­i­ty in day-to-day oper­a­tions. Staff is using the tech­nol­o­gy to proac­tive­ly assess KPUD sys­tems and imple­ment work plans.