Once every three months, a helicopter flies over the transmission lines of a large energy operator, at a cost of tens of thousands of euros per mission.
Between two flights, an electrical connection slowly starts to overheat, with no visible sign from the ground. By the time the helicopter comes back three months later, the fault has already turned into an incident that takes part of the grid out of service.
The question isn’t whether conventional inspection could have prevented this, but how often it would have had to be repeated to catch it in time. For the helicopter, the answer is simple: too rarely, at too high a cost.
Why conventional inspection has a low cadence and a high cost
A helicopter inspection flight costs significantly more per mission than an equivalent BVLOS operation. It can’t be sent out daily, or even monthly, without disproportionate costs.
The result is a quarterly inspection cycle, which leaves long windows in which a fault can develop undetected.
How BVLOS changes the equation
Scheduled flights along predefined paths, with high-resolution visual and thermal sensors, can be repeated daily or weekly.
The cost is 60% to 80% lower than with a helicopter, and the cadence is hundreds of times higher.
In practice, energy infrastructure goes from a quarterly “snapshot” to almost continuous tracking of its real condition.
Real results, not just theoretical potential
References from DroneFlight’s operations in the Netherlands show, over 12 months of operation:
- a 45% reduction in hotspot detection time on energy infrastructure;
- two major incidents prevented.
These results came precisely from combining high cadence with precision thermal sensors.
Integration with maintenance workflows
Reports in the Premium package feed directly into the operator’s existing maintenance workflows and are compatible with systems such as SCADA, SAP PM, or Maximo.
That way, an anomaly spotted from the air goes straight to the right technical team, with no extra administrative step.