Staying ahead of the technology curve means strengthening your competitive advantage. That is why we give you data-driven innovation insights into the energy industry. This time, you get to discover 5 hand-picked autonomous drone solutions impacting energy companies.
Out of 190, the Global Startup Heat Map highlights 5 Top Autonomous Drone Solutions impacting Energy Companies
The insights of this data-driven analysis are derived from the Big Data & Artificial Intelligence-powered StartUs Insights Discovery Platform, covering 2 093 000+ startups & scaleups globally. The platform gives you an exhaustive overview of emerging technologies & relevant startups within a specific field in just a few clicks.
The Global Startup Heat Map below reveals the distribution of the 190 exemplary startups & scaleups we analyzed for this research. Further, it highlights 5 startups that we hand-picked based on criteria such as founding year, location, funding raised, and more. You get to explore the solutions of these 5 startups & scaleups in this report. For insights on the other 185 autonomous drone solutions for energy companies, get in touch.
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Aeriosense automates Routine Condition Assessment
Manual periodical assessment of energy assets is critical to ensure uninterrupted power generation and grid operations. However, manual visits to individual machinery and logging its condition in paper or smartphones are time-consuming. Besides, such methods of data acquisition offer little information on asset conditions. This is why startups develop autonomous drones tailored for condition assessments, allowing energy companies and operators to automate asset monitoring and speed up inspections. Drones also support various imaging capabilities, such as thermal and RGB, which provide granular-level data for asset management.
Aeriosense is a Canadian startup that automates routine condition assessments for energy infrastructure. The startup transforms existing asset data into inspection flight plans to guide drones into optimal vantage points. It then automatically stores the inspection data into built-in reporting systems integrable with existing asset management workflows. Moreover, since Aeriosense works with existing workflows rather than building new ones, its solution significantly accelerates the transition to autonomous inspections. It, thereby, reduces inspection costs and provides consistent, high-quality data.
FlyNex offers Inspection and Maintenance Support
Inspection staff often climb onto equipment and infrastructure to get a closer look at asset conditions. This causes immense danger to life, especially during inspection of wind towers or electricity poles. To prevent avoidable injuries, startups provide drones that efficiently replace human labor while offering increased flexibility and productivity in inspection operations. This, in turn, enables inspection teams to ensure the safety of their workers and significantly reduce the time and labor involved.
German startup FlyNex provides inspection and maintenance support for energy providers and power grid operators. FlyNex Enterprise Suite, the startup’s cloud platform, offers drones for use cases specific to the energy sector along with appropriate analytics tools. This facilitates remote inspection for poles, power lines, gas pipelines, and wind turbines, thus eliminating the need for time-intensive manual checks.
Nando provides Physical Site Security
Solar and wind energy projects usually occupy large spaces and, hence, are set up in remote areas. This potentially increases the risk of theft and vandalism. For instance, cases of missing solar panels and copper wires from solar plants are very common. To tackle physical security threats, startups deploy drones to offer continuous surveillance of energy generation units. This also allows energy companies to automate surveillance and reduce the number of staff on patrol while requiring only a quick response team.
Israeli startup Nando provides site security for solar farms. The startup’s solution combines a docking station and drones for autonomous operations along with an artificial intelligence (AI)-based camera capable of onboard image processing and control software. This enables solar farms to replace capital-intensive human guards with low-cost continuous monitoring drones that detect movement and human form from up to 250 meters. Upon detection, the system forwards the intrusion discovery to quick response teams, thereby mitigating theft and resource loss. In addition to site security, Nando-Drones provides analysis of solar panel conditions using thermal imaging and AI.
BladeInsight enables Continuous Asset Management
Project managers in the energy industry need access to critical asset information, past and present, to prioritize maintenance operations. However, traditional means rely on periodic inspections. This does not allow energy companies to monitor granular changes in asset conditions and tasks regularly. Therefore, startups provide drones for continuous asset monitoring, which enables project managers to decouple asset health information from inspection data and facilitate daily operational decision-making.
BladeInsight is a Portuguese startup that offers continuous and comprehensive asset management for wind parks. The startup uses data from autonomous drones, internal robot crawlers, manual inspection, and ground inspections to generate repeatable and reliable insights on its analytics platform. Further, the platform provides a dashboard and analytics solution to monitor wind parks and prioritize maintenance tasks. This allows farm managers to compare damages internally and externally, plan maintenance operations efficiently, and reduce downtimes.
Nearthlab offers Wind Turbine Inspections
Manual wind turbine inspections demand workers to approach wind towers and check the status of wind blades. This causes potential danger to their life, which is why startups develop drones tailored for wind turbine examinations. This way, wind farm owners and operators are able to automate inspections and significantly reduce downtime as well as worker health risks while improving productivity.
Nearthlab is a South Korean startup that provides wind turbine inspections. The startup uses autonomous drones to generate high-quality visuals of wind energy assets, which its artificial intelligence algorithm analyzes to identify defects. Additionally, it provides an all-in-one cloud platform to store and manage all the inspection data. This enables onshore and offshore wind farm managers to automate full and spot inspections, thereby improving worker safety.
Discover more Energy Startups
Energy startups such as the examples highlighted in this report focus on edge and cloud computing, advanced analytics as well as artificial intelligence. While all of these technologies play a major role in advancing the energy industry, they only represent the tip of the iceberg. To explore more energy technologies, simply get in touch to let us look into your areas of interest. For a more general overview, you can download our free Energy Innovation Report to save your time and improve strategic decision-making.
