Drones to keep an eye on power transmission towers in Madhya Pradesh from October 1

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The state-run Madhya Pradesh Power Transmission Company Limited (MPPTCL) is going to deploy drones to monitor 10,000 high voltage towers in the state beginning October 1, a senior company official said on Monday.

"This is for the first time in the country that drones are going to be used to check tall towers for smooth power supply, MPPTCL Managing Director Sunil Tiwari claimed while talking to PTI.

He said drones will take videos and close range pictures of the towers. Currently, the inspection of towers is being done manually. Employees climb the towers to check the equipment and this process is very time consuming and laborious. Now, drones would do this work, he said.

The benefit of using the drone technology is that we can take photographs and video of the equipment installed on the towers closely from all sides, the official said.

Tiwari said they decided to deploy drones after their use for inspection on an experimental basis for some months showed encouraging results.

The drones are going to be used for the inspection of 10,000 out of the 80,000 extra high voltage power transmission line towers installed across Madhya Pradesh from next month, he said.

We are taking 10,000 towers in the first phase. The drone monitoring of the rest 70,000 towers will be taken up later, he said, adding that the inspection of towers was done periodically under maintenance work.

"Our engineers are going to supervise the drone monitoring of towers for which a private firm has been hired," he said. The MPPTCL wheels power from the electricity generation units to distribution companies, which in-turn supply electricity to households and for business purposes.