A drone may prevent outages in North Attleboro

By Alana Cerrone

acerrone@abc6.com

@Alana_Cerrone

This is the future of utility inspection.

North Attleboro Electric is in a pilot program to test a drone that will inspect the town’s 7500 poles, rather than rely on pictures taken from below.

Electric Department General Manager Jay Moynihan says, "Right now all of our information is from the ground looking upward."

The Allied Drone lets the electric department get a close up bird’s eye view of potential problems

Allied Drones CEO Josh Kornoff added, "There’s just no other way to do it other than put a guy in truck in a basket and in that case the drone is much faster."

“What this offers us is the opportunity to better do preventive maintenance.”

That preventive maintenance comes in handy during severe wind and snow storms.

"If there’s excess resistance we’ll be able to see that and that triggers us to let them know they have a bad component or it’s loose and they’ll come out and fix it."

North Attleboro is not alone…National Grid is planning a similar pilot program later this month.

 "Ultimately we’ll have to decide whether or not there’s any future in a North Attleboro Electric Department Air Force."

Each drone costs about $10,000. North Attleboro Electric would buy one to monitor all of its poles.

The drone operator actually has to be a certified aircraft pilot.

(C) WLNE-TV 2016