The idea was to ensure that the autonomous drones could begin helping power restoration immediately after a storm, even in relatively windy conditions – identifying which electrical poles or wires are down, and helping better task and manage both crews and equipment. ![]() Prior to their installation at the FPL facility, the Percepto drones were independently tested at a wind tunnel at Florida International University at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour. “For a utility to be able to see our infrastructure in areas where we can’t get to safely…to quickly fly over it and understand what our conditions are…” is something FPL couldn’t previously achieve. Michael Dorr agrees that Percepto’s capability is invaluable. The Percepto drones stay above 130 feet to avoid power poles and other obstructions. This enables the Percepto Sparrows to cover the entire Martin County facility with regular, pre-programmed autonomous flights over the plant’s 11,000 acres. Percepto’s system is approved by the FAA for flights two miles Beyond Visual Line of Sight ( BVLoS) and FPL’s waiver from the FAA allows them to leverage this capability. Moreover, the Percepto solution is safer, faster, more efficient and more economical to operate than traditional inspection methods – notably piloted drones.Īs Michael Dorr, a senior FPL drone pilot, mentioned in a recent interview with a local news station with Percepto “we’re able to quickly deploy…instead of charging batteries, getting all our gear, and traveling to the site. Previously experienced with piloted drone solutions, FPL chose Percepto’s autonomous drones because they enable 24/7 real-time monitoring of service events like power outages. To better monitor their power production infrastructure, FPL initially deployed two Percepto Sparrow drone-in-a-box solutions on-site in their Next Generation Clean Energy Center in Martin County, Florida. Among the technologies FPL adopted were Percepto’s autonomous drones. Moreover, FPL turned to advanced technologies to enable the company to more quickly identify the sources of power outages in its estimated 119,000 km of transmission lines, as well as numerous power generation facilities and substations. To prepare for worsening storm seasons and further streamline their emergency response, FPL initiated a number of dramatic steps, including a massive $35 billion power line burial program. The total price tag of damage to FPL’s infrastructure from Dorian’s powerful winds topped $274 million. And just last year, 160,000 customers in FPL’s service area lost power due to Hurricane Dorian. ![]() ![]() In 2018, Hurricane Irma knocked out power to 90% of FPL’s 5 million customer households and businesses. In 2019 alone, there were 20 tropical storms (compared to just 16 in the previous year) that caused 107 deaths and over $11 billion in damage to property across the region.įlorida Power & Light (FPL) – one of the largest energy companies in the United States – knows a lot about emergency response to service interruptions owing to storm damage. What’s more, in recent years the number and severity of storms have increased. For this reason, specialized drone service provider companies exist, and their significance will continue to grow, even if the automated UAV flight (i.e., without the need of a remote pilot) will become the industry standard.In Florida, the Atlantic hurricane season – roughly from June to November – is the time of year that utility companies dread. When investing in their own drone fleet, many businesses discover that the cost of drone ownership is high and exceeds CAPEX in the UAV. The drone station was thus ready for further batch production and TRL-8 technology. Some minor modifications and DFM were made as part of the DVT (the initial engineering concept and design engineering practices of EnCata concerned manufacturability and cost-efficiency of the manufacturing process) In the DVT (design validation testing, equal to TRL-7 and TRL-8) the electronics were integrated as a large module and some PCBAs were respun. ![]() The assembled and tested alpha-prototype (TRL-6) then successfully passed field tests with the customer’s drone system and telecommunication software to achieve TRL-7. Individual cells were actively balanced with an additional circuit, providing reliable charging and longer battery life. In the second iteration, Li-ion batteries were used. The 1st iteration IC design received Li-Poly batteries where individual cells were passively balanced with resistors. In addition, a custom BMS (battery management system) had to be designed. Precision mechanics for hangar opening/closing, drone positioning table subsystems, and a custom 200 A peak (500 W power) charger were the particular engineering challenges we faced in achieving the TRL-5 development phase (equal to EVT). control “motherboard” controller the whole system.Initially (for the EVT, or engineering validation tests) 3 custom PCBA modules were designed:
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