Ghana’s Electricity Service Provider, ECG has launched a drone service to help with its operations and ensure effective service delivery in the country.
After a successful training of some engineers in the company’s school, ECG has deployed 15 drone machines. This is to help for monitoring effectively and deal with the challenges of vegetation interference as well as identifying weak areas.
In addition, the drones will help with routine technical inspections in the power network to identify defects, right of way inspections of overhead lines to identify vegetation encroachment, thermal inspections of the network to identify hot spots, verification of work done by bush clearing and tree cutting contractors, route mapping for construction of new lines, as well as trouble-shooting of faulted portions of the network to locate faults for isolation on overhead lines, according to the Managing Director, Mr. Kwame Agyeman-Budu.
The drones called Wingtra Drones were supplied and serviced by Sahara Natural Resources. They can last up to an hour in flight and can travel a maximum distance of 8km with contact with a connected control tablet, which saves data for future use.
