Should we use robots for electric grid recovery operations? 

The "derecho" storms that knocked out power to over 3 million people, including hundreds of thousands in the DC area, have left too many suffering in sweltering heat without air conditioning. It's also apparent to the Nation's Capital how critical electricity is to having gasoline readily available - no electric, no gas pump. One of the problems in restoring power is determining exactly where trees that have cut lines have fallen.

Question: Could the utilities use UAVs to supplement their electric grid restoration efforts? Are robots part of the future of smart grid? 

Electric grid monitoring by robot is already being done by China - one article notes UAV grid inspection in Shandong Province going back to 2005. Scholarly piece here. Monitoring has also been proposed in the US, for example:

Smart view for a smart grid — Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for transmission lines

Toth, J.; Gilpin-Jackson, A.
Applied Robotics for the Power Industry (CARPI), 2010 1st International Conference on 
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/CARPI.2010.5624465 
Publication Year: 2010 , Page(s): 1 - 6

IEEE CONFERENCE PUBLICATIONS

Quick Abstract  | PDF (624 KB)

 


... but I'm not sure that UAVs have actually been used in grid restoration efforts -- we could probably use some additional eyes in the ongoing effort now.

UPDATE: This July 2, 2012 article from the New York Times notes the experimental use of a drone in grid recovery operations,

“You can’t stop outages,” he said. “It’s going to happen.” But, he added, the industry is working to make power distribution more resilient, with better monitoring of the grid to spot problem areas. “The smarter we make the power system, the more likely it is that we will mitigate the spread of outages, and we can restore more quickly.”

The industry is also developing tools that could help repair crews do their work, including a drone, being tested in New Mexico, that could help utilities tell quickly which roads are passable and which are not.

All of these tools and techniques will be needed; the problem of storms is likely to grow worse. Harold Brooks, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s national severe storms laboratory, said that models of climate changesuggest that over the next 100 years, a warming earth will provide more energy for storms, so “we expect there will be more environments that are favorable for severe thunderstorms.”


And Jesse Berst at Smart Grid News had this piece from July 2011, on how robotics could revolutionize the smart grid: http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/Delivery_Grid_Optimization/We-Robots-How-robotics-could-revolutionize-the-smart-grid-3828.html