Background
21st September, Sydney, Australia: Unleash live announces energy sector collaboration with Optus, AWS, and Endeavour Energy, funded by the Australian Federal Government’s latest 5G innovation initiative. The collaboration will 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, Australia.
On-site inspections are currently conducted by Endeavour Energy’s team of engineers, utilizing a large fleet of vehicles, helicopters, and technicians to physically identify and carry out remediation. The collaboration will leverage a combination of 5G, cloud, artificial intelligence (A.I.), 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.
To read the full press release, head over to the Optus website. You can learn more about Unleash live’s offerings for the energy sector here, or read our case study for similar previous work with Horizon Power.
Unleash live will leverage A.I. to analyze video content recorded with UHD cameras mounted on utility vehicles and drones, leveraging Optus’ 5G network, Australia's fastest 5G network.
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 identify manually. 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.
“The Unleash live enterprise platform is being used today for many applications within the energy industry for improved energy production through faster and more cost-effective fault detection at Wind and Solar farms as well as the connected grid," says Unleash live CEO and co-founder Hanno Blankenstein. "Power line inspection benefits from the application of A.I., improving safety and reducing the cost of maintaining such high value distributed assets."
