Heat in excess carries a penchant to cause things to go haywire. And summer offers heat in abundance. Summer also ushers in the Atlantic hurricane season, which can prove crippling to the utility industries. This turbulent mix of excess heat and extreme storms may cause sharp dips in productivity through unintended downtime. However, industry leaders in utilities have adopted cutting-edge tech aimed at pinpointing plant outages before they happen.
Turning to Thermal Tagging
There’s little doubt that utilities can fail under the pressure of the elements. Plant outages would rarely occur if the technology stood completely foolproof. That hasn’t stopped utility innovators from developing workarounds, though.
New inroads in incorporating thermal data, coupled with ingenious geospatial analysis, may signal a turning point in maintenance. While once confined to bucket trucks and manned aircraft, utilities maintenance has pivoted to more remote solutions. And the benefits are beginning to be recognized.
Owing its success to AI-driven thermal tagging, this shift in utilities maintenance seems to pay dividends in more than one way. Risks no longer pose as huge a threat, workflow has seen a boost, employees experience safer shifts, and customers enjoy undisturbed service.
The Hottest New Tech
With this shift, utilities maintenance has swung from reactive to proactive. Data collection is no longer saddled with long periods of delay. In fact, thermal sensor-strapped drones clock in exponentially less time than what bucket trucks traditionally register. Drones carry out their objectives in a matter of minutes; bucket trucks take hours.
The benefits for AI-supported thermal tagging extend beyond better and faster data recovery. Bucket trucks and manned planes harbor a risk of injury, or worse, befalling an operator. Drones, in essence, rule out this situation.
Drones, and other AI-powered innovations, also cater to improved data analysis. AI-based analytics software programs automate outlier reports, providing precise component-level inspection. Geospatial analysis streamlines data processing through its state-of-the-art tagging system that flags and rates hot spots. This boils down to better bottom lines for the utilities industry, saving both time and money.
Priming for Prevention
The utilities industry seems to be following a new bent: modern data collection methods and maintenance through drones. With scores of benefits at their disposal, it’s not hard to see why. AI-supported thermal tagging stems from a prescription in prevention—addressing problem areas before plant outages occur. The safety, savings, and security surrounding this kind of integrated surveillance position it as a reliable approach moving forward.
The utilities industry, through AI-driven thermal tagging, has struck a new reign in maintenance solutions. Speaking of solutions, find your application and industry-specific ones at ProcessBarron. There’s a reason we’re leaders in material handling and the pulp and paper industry. Reach out to us for a quote or to link up with a representative. Plus, find out the latest news for an array of sectors on our blog!