A helicopter has moved for the first time to the south of Gran Canaria to digitize and analyze the state of health of Endesa's medium voltage electrical networks with a preventive objective. The revisions are made of the power lines from Juan Grande with the latest technology that allows obtaining high-resolution 3 D images. The helicopter departed from the El Berriel airfield to make an exhaustive inspection of the power lines in the ravines of the south and southeast of Gran Canary. The entire team that performs this type of flight is made up of a pilot, a mechanic, three operators and a support vehicle. Up to seven people can travel inside the helicopter. Every day they fly six hours with intervals of three cycles, since they return to the ground to download the abundant high-resolution documentary material obtained every two hours.
Until the end of March and for a period of four months, a helicopter hired by Endesa equipped with the latest technology reviews the medium voltage electrical networks millimeter-wise from the air. So far, the helicopter has already made it possible to detect and correct 49 observations on the lines and 39 situations of vegetation too close to turrets and other electrical elements.
Intervention from the air allows aerial inspections to detect possible defects in the networks and know their true state of health. The helicopter participating in this project will travel hundreds of kilometers of overhead medium voltage electrical networks, practically all of those existing in the south of Gran Canaria, and combines inspection with the work of digitalization and geolocation of the power lines.
In addition, it allows us to know the inventory of the Endesa network, detect the approach of plant mass to towers and prevent possible fires, as well as locate what experts call hot spots through thermal imaging cameras capable of detecting a minimum rise of five degrees. , analyze the cause and act immediately to avoid incidents in the electrical network.
The helicopter used is white and red, flies low and is characterized by following the path of the power lines through ravines, mountains and all kinds of places in flights that, at times, seem more typical of a true sky juggler. At the controls of the helicopter is the pilot, Pascual Oliva, one of the few pilots in Spain trained to undertake this type of reconnaissance and who travels across the electrical networks throughout Spain, incorporating the most advanced camera technology on board the helicopter.
The value of the helicopter and the latest technology it has installed to photograph from the air, obtaining 3 D images of the power lines in the Canary Islands amounts to two million euros. It is equipped with a LIDAR device or laser scanner, thermal imaging camera, 4K photo and video camera. The LIDAR device allows you to create a point cloud with the network status and offers a three-dimensional visualization.
Pascual Oliva, pilot of the Endesa helicopter, explains that in the Canary Islands “the highly variable meteorology on the same island has become a problem in its mission to digitize the electrical networks from the air.” He also points to the orography of Tenerife and the ravines of Gran Canaria as another of the causes that can cause the most problems for this type of tours. In recent days they had to suspend several flights as a result of the high incidence of haze that caused visibility problems and which constitutes a corrosive element for certain parts of the device.
