Periodic Reporting for period 1 - THRUST (THRUST - SUBSTITUTING HELICOPTERS WITH CLIMATE-FRIENDLY FIXED-WING DRONES FOR INFRASTRUCTURE INSPECTION)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-06-01 bis 2023-02-28
In EU alone total length of overhead electricity lines reaches staggering 5.3 million km. That is more than 5 million km of potential fail points, that need to be inspected and maintained in order to ensure the reliability of electricity supply. Currently, these inspections are carried out by helicopters or walking inspection crews. However, both of these practices carry significant drawbacks.
Walking inspector crews are very slow (can cover 7-10 km per day). We estimate in EU these inspections require 3.1 million man-hours each year. Also, these inspections are not accurate – the inspector is visually inspecting electricity grid from the ground, hence some defects are difficult or even impossible to spot. Furthermore, this type of inspection is focused on reactive maintenance – identifying faults that are already there, instead of preventing faults from happening in the first place. Research shows that 64% of the outages are weather related or caused by faults in electricity grid elements, which could have been prevented by proactive maintenance practices.
Meanwhile helicopters can be equipped with advanced sensors (like LiDAR, thermal or high-resolution photo cameras), but are very expensive, carry high risk of loss of life (in case of flying into the electricity lines, survival rate is very low), the data quality suffers due to strong vibrations, while the engine consumes fuel at 60 l/h.
Despite all of this environmental damage, time and money put into ensuring reliability of the grid, the outages are still prevalent across EU. For example, in 2016 there were more than 10 thousand forced electricity outages in EU transmission grid alone. We estimate that power outages in EU result in around 7,2-9.3 billion euros in economic damages per year.
The societal challenge – reducing vast economic losses due to electricity supply interruptions, while simultaneously reducing inspection cost and environmental impact.
Our proposed solution – substituting helicopters and walking crews with our new generation unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with LiDAR , RGB, multispectral and thermal cameras, combined with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) powered analytics, that can quickly and accurately identify defects and faults in electricity grid elements.
Walking inspector crews are very slow (can cover 7-10 km per day). We estimate in EU these inspections require 3.1 million man-hours each year. Also, these inspections are not accurate – the inspector is visually inspecting electricity grid from the ground, hence some defects are difficult or even impossible to spot. Furthermore, this type of inspection is focused on reactive maintenance – identifying faults that are already there, instead of preventing faults from happening in the first place. Research shows that 64% of the outages are weather related or caused by faults in electricity grid elements, which could have been prevented by proactive maintenance practices.
Meanwhile helicopters can be equipped with advanced sensors (like LiDAR, thermal or high-resolution photo cameras), but are very expensive, carry high risk of loss of life (in case of flying into the electricity lines, survival rate is very low), the data quality suffers due to strong vibrations, while the engine consumes fuel at 60 l/h.
Despite all of this environmental damage, time and money put into ensuring reliability of the grid, the outages are still prevalent across EU. For example, in 2016 there were more than 10 thousand forced electricity outages in EU transmission grid alone. We estimate that power outages in EU result in around 7,2-9.3 billion euros in economic damages per year.
The societal challenge – reducing vast economic losses due to electricity supply interruptions, while simultaneously reducing inspection cost and environmental impact.
Our proposed solution – substituting helicopters and walking crews with our new generation unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with LiDAR , RGB, multispectral and thermal cameras, combined with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) powered analytics, that can quickly and accurately identify defects and faults in electricity grid elements.
Action 1 covers the activities needed to attract the investors to the company. The new investment will be used to scale up our operations, thus supporting our knowledge-driven, recourse efficient deep-tech solution.
Action 2 will further increase our company scalability, by laying foundation for our expansion to new industries, which will be achieved by increasing cooperation and network connectivity between different innovation ecosystems. As an early-stage start-up, we have already developed an extensive network of partners in the regional innovation ecosystem, however under Action 2 we will expand our innovation partner network and act as a link between new and current partners, thus increasing overall cooperation between innovation ecosystems on the international level. We will use EIC Women Leadership Program, Business Acceleration Services to further increase cooperation between innovation ecosystems.
Action 3 will help to further scale our operations – we plan to certify one of our women team members as a drone pilot, thus increasing our capacity to provide services and allowing to scale up service sales in the short-term. THRUST has been applying gender inclusion, diversity and equality policy from the day of its inception: ensuring that all employees are provided with equal opportunities (especially in taking leadership roles to ensure equity), a zero tolerance against bullying, harassment and discrimination. We are committed to enforce this policy as we scale-up THRUST. Furthermore, we will use THRUST women success stories to encourage more women to join the drone & aviation industry. The aviation industry has been one of the most male dominated industries at all levels. Our project will contribute to addressing this disparity by raising awareness via promotional campaign and sharing success stories of women in THRUST leadership positions (and the support we received from Women TechEU).
Action 2 will further increase our company scalability, by laying foundation for our expansion to new industries, which will be achieved by increasing cooperation and network connectivity between different innovation ecosystems. As an early-stage start-up, we have already developed an extensive network of partners in the regional innovation ecosystem, however under Action 2 we will expand our innovation partner network and act as a link between new and current partners, thus increasing overall cooperation between innovation ecosystems on the international level. We will use EIC Women Leadership Program, Business Acceleration Services to further increase cooperation between innovation ecosystems.
Action 3 will help to further scale our operations – we plan to certify one of our women team members as a drone pilot, thus increasing our capacity to provide services and allowing to scale up service sales in the short-term. THRUST has been applying gender inclusion, diversity and equality policy from the day of its inception: ensuring that all employees are provided with equal opportunities (especially in taking leadership roles to ensure equity), a zero tolerance against bullying, harassment and discrimination. We are committed to enforce this policy as we scale-up THRUST. Furthermore, we will use THRUST women success stories to encourage more women to join the drone & aviation industry. The aviation industry has been one of the most male dominated industries at all levels. Our project will contribute to addressing this disparity by raising awareness via promotional campaign and sharing success stories of women in THRUST leadership positions (and the support we received from Women TechEU).
The expected results from this project will cover higher chance of securing venture capital funds for further company development, increased scalability due to expanded cross-industry partner network as well as increased operational capacity (due to newly certified drone pilots) and increased women engagement in drone industry (due to promotional campaign).