Drones provide critical visual and thermal data on the operating condition of power stations helping power generation and utility companies improve health and safety by keeping inspectors out of dangerous situations.

Read our power generation case studies:

Sutton Bridge Power Station
Margam Green Energy Power Plant

The oil and gas industry uses drones for a range of tasks including:

• Leak Detection – prior to drones, traditional leak detection methods were costly and inefficient. Oil and gas companies would detect leaks by mounting fixed detectors at high-risk spots in facilities and along pipelines or by having inspectors occasionally check areas with portable detectors.
• Asset maintenance – Drones also allow you to cut down on labour costs and can reduce inspection time by as much as 80%. This means you need fewer workers to work fewer hours. Plus, you save on travel costs associated with bringing in surveyors.
• Optimising operations – Drones can collect a wide range of data about offshore oil and gas production, including flow rates, pressure and temperature readings. This data can help oil and gas producers optimise their operations and improve production efficiency.

Wind and solar farms’ life span depends on regular and efficient maintenance, and due to the nature of wind and solar farms covering large areas of land, inspections can take a long time and cost a lot of money. With drone surveys, renewable energy companies can vastly reduce inspection times and costs.

Civil engineers are increasingly using drone technology within the industry on projects such as motorway construction, riverway assessments, parks and open space aerial imagery

As with the construction industry drones are a key part of the design and planning process. Drones allow civil engineers to create site maps of areas, with overhead views displaying topography and other important environmental data.

As drone technology advances, drones are taking on more construction tasks than ever before.

• Land surveys – drones can survey large land areas relatively quickly. Using drones for land surveying can save up to 10 times the cost of using traditional manual methods.
• Remote monitoring – Drones can create an aerial view to give clients a grasp of the progress of the construction project when they cannot be physically present on-site.
• Security – drones can check that equipment is stored securely and improve on-site security by monitoring unauthorised access
• Safety of the workforce – falls from height accounted for 41% of construction worker deaths in 2021. Drones can be used to mitigate the risk to construction workers when climbing scaffolding to take manual measurements.

Inspections using drones are more cost-effective than traditional methods such as surveying land via helicopter or using engineers on the ground. Since the majority of drone inspections are completed without the need for further action, this minimises the use of expensive equipment such as erecting expensive scaffolding, meaning drone inspections can save tens of thousands of pounds on a single project.

Also, since drone inspections are much faster than other methods the costs of downtime to critical infrastructure are much lower thereby further reducing overall project costs.

Traditional inspection methods mean inspection engineers have to climb hundreds of feet up scaffolding or viewing platforms where a fall could lead to serious injury or death. Using drones reduces this risk by accessing and checking the integrity of the structure remotely. If repairs or physical maintenance is needed, inspection engineers can determine if it’s safe to climb or if additional equipment is needed.

Regular drone footage can be used to highlight changes in a structure such as a power stack or wind turbine over time. If there’s a concern with an issue such as corrosion that could get worse over time but doesn’t need immediate repair, then previous and current data can be compared to determine if the issue has got worse over time. This can also minimise liability in the event of an accident or issue with a previously inspected infrastructure.

From taking the initial project requirements through to ultimate sign-off, drone inspections make it possible to keep projects on track and on budget throughout the life of the project. In addition to exposing issues before they create hazards or delays, drone inspections simplify the compliance documentation and reporting aspects of a project.

When used for inspections, drones are a powerful tool in civil engineering, power plants, oil and gas and construction industries. In all of these industries, drones save money, protect workers’ safety, and increase the speed of project lifecycles.