The photo shows a drone-carrying intelligent inspection vehicle ready to start an automatic power inspection task.
BEIJING, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS)-based intelligent inspection vehicles, usually nicknamed "drone mini carriers", are helping power grid users of many places in China realize all-day-long and all-terrain power patrol inspections and improve operation safety.
The "drone mini carriers", which was first put into operation in 2021 under efforts mainly of State Grid Hunan Electric Power Co., Ltd., can direct drones to complete automatic power patrol inspections and automatic return trips in regions without communication signals.
On October 26, a drone that just completed its automatic patrol over the power distribution lines in Yangming Mountain areas without any population in Yongzhou City of Hunan Province, landed precisely in an intelligent inspection vehicle there.
The photo shows a drone automatically returns back to the intelligent inspection vehicle after completing its task.
Within the vehicle, nine drones are orderly parked in the drone room and on the operating platform through which all the automatic power patrol inspections of drones are carried out, there is a LED screen displaying the accurate positions and remaining time for tasks of drones.
Videos are at the same time sent back to the operating platform by drones during their tasks thus power inspection workers can check at any time and at any place these videos to discern equipment fault.
Equipped with multiple positioning methods to ensure all-day-long and all-terrain communication, the "drone mini carriers" applied BDS-related technology in power grid load management, power supply and power distribution and solved the problems of drones unable to fly automatically in areas with no or weak communication signal or sending task data back to the operating desks.
Six patents have been applied for these intelligent inspection vehicles and on-site inspections have been done for power distribution lines of different loads in Tianjin, Changsha, Hengyang, Loudi, and Zhangjiajie in China, which significantly improved the efficiency of power patrol inspections.
Since their debut in 2021, the "drone mini carriers" reaped broadly positive feedbacks from industry experts. Cheng Siqi, deputy general manager of Hunan provincial power grid construction Co., Ltd. said that these intelligent inspection vehicles have been sold to 14 cities in Hunan Province and other regions in China such as Chongqing, Tianjin and east Inner Mongolia in the first 10 months of 2023 and brought about 32.44 million yuan of output value.
(Edited by Duan Jing with Xinhua Silk Road, duanjing@xinhua.org)
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