These Drones Could Help Keep Your Lights On

One in four U. S. households experiences a power outage each year. Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working on technology they hope will help fix electric grids: drones. They're betting that 2-ft. large drones connected to "smart" electric grids are a cost-effective step to a more electrified future. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave https://plus.npr.org/shortwave. Have an idea for a future episode? We'd love to know — email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]! See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:18Regina Barber?

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:24Regina Barber?

  Hey, Short Wavers. So a lot of you might know this, but if you're going to tackle climate change, we have to stop relying on fossil fuels. And if we're going to stop relying on fossil fuels, we're going to have to start using a lot more renewable energy. And in order to switch over to renewable energy, we're going to need to electrify everything, which is great. Electrification can create a lot of efficiency and a lot of jobs. But as anyone who has experienced a blackout can tell you, the electrical grid is not perfect. So a key part of a successful electrification will be solving the problem of power outages. Because get this, one in every four households experiences a power outage annually.

• 1:06Regina Barber?

  That's why today I'm talking to Peter Fjor. He's an electrical engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He lives in Fort White, Florida, and he's experienced his share of power outages, like Hurricane Helene back in September.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Helene was a massive storm. And she came ashore about 40 miles away from where we live. So at our place, our winds topped out at about 90 miles an hour. And we had trees that fell and all sorts of stuff like that. But why stop there? Because two weeks later, here comes Milton. Here it was piles and piles and piles of furniture and mattresses and blown out buildings and everything like that.

• 1:44Regina Barber?

  This past hurricane season, Peter and his wife lost power for days.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  We were without power for quite a while. The internet crashed, so, oh, my goodness, communications was tough.

• 1:55Regina Barber?

  And here's the thing. Every time a power outage happens, whether it's because of a fallen tree or a small animal or a severe weather event, somebody has to go and investigate.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  And a classic way that has been the norm, you roll a truck and you send some workers out there to see what the heck is going on. As told by being corroborated by others in the utility side, to roll a truck just to go see, was it a squirrel? Was it a snake? Did somebody hit a pole?

• 2:23Regina Barber?

  Was it a giant tree?

• 2:25Speaker 02

  1,500 bucks. Minimum cost.

• 2:28Regina Barber?

  That's just to investigate, not even to fix it. It's not just expensive, it can be dangerous. Line workers may have to survey miles and miles of line in search of the electrical problem, or bushwhack their way through woods or swampland to access it. When there's extreme weather or severe flooding, the risk of electrocution is extremely high.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  And that led us to this idea of, let's automate some of the inspections to help the line workers. Instead of having to send everything, let's send a drone and just have it do levels of inspection and report back to the system.

• 3:02Regina Barber?

  And Peter says these drones, he and his team are testing out, they're mostly just standard drones, you know, the wireless charging quadcopter kind.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  And then, if the system is smart, it may be able to resurrect the grid in a controlled manner.

• 3:15Regina Barber?

  On its own.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  You bet.

• 3:17Regina Barber?

  So today on the show, the drones are coming. We take a peek at the drones Oak Ridge National Lab scientists are betting on for the future of the electrical grid. I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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• 4:55Regina Barber?

  Okay, so Peter, what we're talking about is like drones that could help fix the electrical grid. And that's just like one part of what's called a smart electrical grid. Can you say what you mean by that? Like what tech is used to make a grid smart?

• 5:08Speaker 02

  So, okay, what's smart? What's new? Well, it's a combination of software and some instrumentation that's in place. I'm going to euphemistically refer to that as all the software that goes into running utility. I'll call it SCADA. It could be outage management. There are other things. I'm going to lump them together, SCADA.

• 5:25Regina Barber?

  What does SCADA stand for? Sorry.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition.

• 5:31Regina Barber?

  Got it.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's got a couple of pieces to it. So the data acquisition says, hey, what am I getting the data from? Sensors. So part of the smart grid is put sensors out in the field to see what's going on. And supervisory control is basically issuing commands across the grid, either to the substations or certain devices that are on poles to say, open now, close there. You know, there are automated reclosers and things called intellirupters, and that leads to the smart grid. And the main thing is, hey, I can put sensors out on the lines and have a better idea of what's happening. So the SCADA system is monitoring the system, the grid itself.

• 6:10Regina Barber?

  Okay, so this SCADA system is basically just like capable of checking in on itself? Like determining what's going wrong or when something's going wrong? Like if there's an outage or a power surge or anything like that?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Versus the not smart grid doesn't have a not so smart grid.

• 6:26Regina Barber?

  Yeah, the rudimentary grid, the remedial grid.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  I like the remedial grid.

• 6:31Regina Barber?

  Okay, so you have like this smart grid. First, it's like, I think something's wrong. Let's go back to the first decision. How does it decide when and where to send a drone?

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Again, in a regular, it's sort of mimicking what happens in a regular utility. So we have drones sitting on station at various locations. And the system says, hey, I got something going on over here. Maybe it's crackling, like a cracked insulator. So there's... And you have all the GPS locations of where the actual line is. So you can load that into the drone's location, this flight controller, and fly the drone there and do some inspections.

• 7:11Regina Barber?

  Right, the drone uses GPS locations to go like straight to the problem. What's the process of doing an assessment?

• 7:19Speaker 02

  I think it's pretty cool, but come on, I'm very invested in this thing. So what we have designed is the following, a two-stage process like we're going into an ER. So as you go in, it's like, what do you see? Maybe a triage individual to help you right there. And then if necessary, then you go see a specialist. We've done the same thing with the drones.

• 7:39Regina Barber?

  Okay, so like you have these triage drones and then you have these like specialist drones and you send out the triage drone first.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Just to go figure out what's going on, we call that a scout.

• 7:49Regina Barber?

  Got it.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  And the scout has a regular camera, an infrared camera, an ultraviolet camera, got an acoustic sensors because you can hear crackling and stuff like that.

• 8:00Regina Barber?

  Oh, cool.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  And with that being the case, it flies to the location and it looks at what's going on here.

• 8:08Regina Barber?

  Well, well, let's make, paint the picture a little bit more though. Like you said that these drones are situated in like various places. So like, where are they coming from?

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Substations. Have them live at a substation. Why? Because it's a jurisdiction of the actual utility. So typically they have a barbed wire fence and there's some security there. But more importantly, the drones can get recharged. It lands onto a charging platform and then it sits there until it's told, hey, you know, why don't you go over here, go check stuff out.

• 8:39Regina Barber?

  And you mean those substations that have like, you know, those platforms where like the, they're in between power lines, right?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Big electrical transformers are there and that's a thing. A substation is going to take voltage at one level and then knock it down to voltage at another level for distribution into a community. So again, let's walk through the scenario. The SCADA system back at headquarters for the control system for the grid itself says, hey, hey, hey, I got something going on over here at this particular section of our delivery service area. Send a drone, what are the GPS coordinates? Load them up. If the drone has enough charge in it, power, if the ambient conditions are okay, fly it over there. It checks out what's necessary using that base, that minimum configuration of sensors.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Reports back in and says, you know what we really need? We need to dispatch a specialist, just like at the ER, I need to call in a specialist.

• 9:37Regina Barber?

  And is it making that decision through like algorithms? Like who or like what is analyzing the information coming in?

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Well, it's machine controlled, but with a human override. So, you know, a human can do that if they want, but it's straight up mathematics, which is just glorious. Because you can analyze the signals that are coming in, the measurements that are coming in to determine, should we send a scout within, you know, higher resolution infrared or ultraviolet camera? Or something else with these radio frequency detectors, et cetera? And then the specialist goes out and joins the party and then does measurements. And all of that gets bundled up. A decision is made through the beauty of math and some algorithms. And the machine out in the field can say, you know what? It's all okay. You don't have to do a darn thing. Or it can recommend, yeah, you better send a truck on this one and go fix it.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  And then that's the purview of the utility then to actually do that.

• 10:34Regina Barber?

  So, I mean, they are like mathematically going through these if then systems. And then they come up with a diagnosis, right? And you're saying that this is like all automated, right? These drones could potentially like save time and money, plus like prevent dangerous work, right?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Because I can have the drone go do an inspection. And I don't have to have the person climb the poles. That's, that can be kind of hazardous. Or alternatively, it's like, wait a second. If I'm out in those long lines out in Nebraska or Minnesota, northern Minnesota where I'm from. It's like, I may have to have a truck, dispatch a truck with a one or two people in it. And drive for 80 miles to go check out what's happening at this place where perhaps I could have used a drone.

• 11:21Regina Barber?

  Yeah, perhaps it was a squirrel, like you said.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. And all we're talking about right now are just aerial devices, drones, airborne drones. But it could be in the water. There are certain cases where these drones with inspection can go underwater and look at the front facade of dams to see if there's cracking underwater of the dams themselves.

• 11:43Regina Barber?

  Oh, wow.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  There's, there's all sorts of capabilities that are brought where you don't have to put a human in there. I'm not, this is not job replacement. This is line worker augmentation. It really is.

• 11:55Regina Barber?

  I mean, we're, we're talking about like the benefits of these drones, of this like smart grid system, but like, what are the limitations? Like, are there times and locations where relying on it like too much could be detrimental?

• 12:06Speaker 02

  From my perspective with the grid, so what's smart about it again? It's got sensors and some cognition of what's happening in this. And maybe it can actually respond. So notice what I've been talking about is sensing and measurements and then the communication fabric to get the information to an org, either to an application or to a person so they can make the decision about, do we dispatch a truck? That's really about it. The major downfall with these drones, it's weight and power. So you got to watch out there because if it gets too heavy, you're going to suck down the battery, but if it gets too light, the winds will blow it around. So there's a limitation in ambient environmental conditions in which the drones can fly safely.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  You don't want to gust of wind to take the drone and push that into a transformer as you're measuring stuff on the transformer.

• 12:56Regina Barber?

  Like you're the cause of the power outage.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, no, thanks.

• 13:00Regina Barber?

  Right, right now, you said this is, this is an experiment, right? You're, you're working on this. It sounds like utility companies are, are interested. When do you think, or when do you anticipate this going to like wider, spreading wider across the US?

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Again, national lab. So one of our, our core tenets is we do not compete with the private sector. Don't do that. But we can help design stuff and we can do a few demos and build a few products, not quite products, and get it to a specific level and then toss it over the fence and let the private sector pick that up. And our goal is to do that within one year. So a year from, yeah, we're gonna have, we are slated to have demonstrations at various locations across the US this summer, in spring, summer, into the fall.

• 13:45Regina Barber?

  Wow.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  We have a working instantiation of all this stuff. And the, the goal then is to throw it to the private sector by the end of this fiscal year, federal fiscal year, and let it, let it go.

• 13:56Regina Barber?

  Wow.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's aggressive, but the needs are there. And, hey, let's see if we can do it.

• 14:04Regina Barber?

  Yeah, the needs are there. Well, Peter, good luck with all the demos, because that sounds amazing. Good luck with your one-year goal. That sounds intense. Thank you, thank you so much for talking to us.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Oh, you're so kind. It's my pleasure.

• 14:18Regina Barber?

  This episode was produced by Hannah Chin. It was edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. The audio engineer was James Keely. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 14:41Speaker 03

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