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Optus, AWS Create 5G Solution for Electricity Grid Inspections using Drone

Optus, AWS Create 5G Solution for Electricity Grid Inspections using Drone Image Credit: Optus

Optus will collaborate with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AWS partner Unleash live to create a 5G solution for Australian electricity provider, Endeavour Energy to improve the speed, efficiency, and safety of real-time fault inspections of its electricity grid. 

Endeavour Energy’s electricity distribution network spans 47,000km of power lines, 500,000 power poles, and 32,000 substations across Sydney’s Greater West, the Blue Mountains, Southern Highlands, the Illawarra and the South Coast of New South Wales. On-site inspections are currently conducted by Endeavour Energy’s team of engineers, utilising a large fleet of vehicles, helicopters, and a team of technicians to physically identify and carry out remediation. 

 

The collaboration will leverage a combination of 5G, cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), drone technology, and ultra-high definition (UHD) cameras to monitor in real-time the physical state of infrastructure assets on the electricity grid. The solution is designed to keep the electrical supply safe and reliable by identifying where preventative maintenance is needed to improve network safety and avoid costly and unplanned power outages.

Unleash live will leverage AI to analyse video content recorded with UHD cameras mounted on utility vehicles and drones leveraging Optus’ 5G network, the fastest 5G network in Australia. The solution is set to accelerate network remediation and improve worker safety by remotely alerting Endeavour Energy of faults or damaged equipment on the electricity network that could be difficult for humans to manually identify. Examples of the faults that will be identified include rust damage, missing components, erosion of insulation, and cracks in the metal structure.

Visual insights generated from Unleash live’s platform will notify Endeavour Energy if remediation services need to be administered or equipment needs to be replaced without requiring engineers to undertake on-site inspections.

Unleash live’s solution will leverage Amazon Kinesis to collect and process large streams of visual data in real-time. The solution also uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud to provide secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud, and Amazon Simple Storage Service to store and retrieve the data.

Chris Mitchell, Managing Director at Optus Enterprise
This is a great example of AWS, Unleash live and Optus coming together with Endeavour Energy to create an ecosystem of innovation that will have a lasting impact across Australia’s critical infrastructure. 

Author

Ray is a news editor at The Fast Mode, bringing with him more than 10 years of experience in the wireless industry.

For tips and feedback, email Ray at ray.sharma(at)thefastmode.com, or reach him on LinkedIn @raysharma10, Facebook @1RaySharma

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