The magazine for the international power industry February 2018

The Drones Issue

UAVs in the power and utility sector

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 POWER ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL
FEBRUARY 2018/// VOLUME 26/// ISSUE 2

Our special focus on drones starts on page 4

Contents

2 Industry Highlights

34 News Update

36 Diary

36 Ad Index

Features

4 Above and beyond traditional inspections 23 Making sense of flying data

How the use of drones can help companies across the How one drone company aims to enable power
energy sector inspect assets more efficiently. professionals to spend less time planning and more time
analyzing.

9 From hardware to software

How one drone inspection firm moved from hardware- 25 Putting a price on drone savings
based inspections to software solutions. We highlight the significant savings that can be achieved
by using drone technology for inspections.

12 Overcoming inspection challenges

Why drones can overcome many of the inspection 27 The impact of lubrication on TCO
challenges faced by power and utility companies. How lubricants can help reduce total cost of ownership
for turbines, transformers and stationary engines.

16 Beyond the line of sight

Why the Trump administration could be good news for the 29 Actuators in focus
drone sector. A look at the potentials and challenges for electric
actuators in biomass-fired power plants.

18 The autonomous future

Drones must be viewed in conjunction with a broad 32 Preparing for cybersecurity
spectrum of emerging and disruptive technologies. New cybersecurity legislation is coming soon, and those
in the energy sector must be up to speed.

21 The human factor vs the AI trend

Despite the trend toward autonomous drones, the
presence of an experienced pilot remains essential.

On the cover
Cover design: Ross Tucker

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 Industry Highlights
Welcome to the Drones Issue of PEi magazine.
T
he use of unmanned aerial vehicles in the
power and utility sector has been steadily
increasing in recent years.
Many energy firms have discovered that the
bird’s-eye view offered by a drone can pinpoint
far more problems than a traditional inspection
team – and do it in a fraction of the time and
at a much lesser cost.
We are now seeing drones deployed for
inspections of transmission and distribution
infrastructure, wind farms, solar parks, nuclear,
coal and gas-fired power plants.
Thierry Mortier, Global Power & Utilities
Innovation Leader at global consultancy EY, says
that “the power sector is an asset-heavy industry”
and therefore there are ample opportunities for
drones, but he adds that “we see the value
primarily in grid, both in electricity and in gas”.
And he says that the rise of the digital grid
will open even more doors to drone: “There is a
tremendous need to observe, monitor and
inspect the grid more than ever. But the biggest
change with regards to generation will be linked
to the growth of renewables, such as wind
turbines and solar panels. Renewables will only
rise, both as central generation but also in
distributed generation.”
EY are even working on a model that blends
drones with blockchain: “We have built a
scenario where we have an autonomous drone
flying out to do inspections of solar panels and
leveraging blockchain technology. Based on
the flight, you then ask for maintenance, and if
everything is fine then you collect the payment,”
says Mortier.
Elaine Whyte, a director at global consultancy
PwC and its UK drones leader, explains that in
the power sector, which is reliant on the integrity
of a large network, “they are currently just
beginning to appreciate the value that drones
can deliver. It’s still at an early adoption stage
but will rapidly catch on that it will become
business as usual to use them.”
PwC estimates that the commercial market
for drone technology applications across the
global power and utilities industry could be worth
as much as $9.46 billion a year by 2021. “The
good thing about drones,” says Whyte, “is they
give you this absolute definitive, repeatable
recorded golden thread of information.”
There has already been an evolution for those
drone companies operating in the power and
2 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_2 2
utility sector. They quickly realised that the real
value was not just in the collection of data, but
especially in its interpretation.
This has led to many firms evolving into
software developers.
“In the beginning we didn’t have the report
generation option and we just added it as a
basic feature before realising its probably the
most important aspect of the product,” says Ken
Falk, founder of Scopito.
Wei Yik Lee, co-founder of Advanced Vision
Analytics Asia, says that the “the value of the
drone signals a new era – and that era is data.
That data comes from images, and what you
can do with that data is boundless. Predictive
maintenance will be possible in the future with
a drone.” Riaan Meyer, managing director of
UAV firm GeoSun Africa, agrees: “The sensors
that can be connected to a drone will open up
so many doors, you are going to be blown away.”
He says that already companies using drone
inspections are considering using the service
every few months instead of annually because
it is so much quicker than traditional methods.
“That would yield a dynamic volume of data.”
The rise of artificial intelligence is allowing scope
for autonomous drones to come into play in the
energy sector.
Will Hitchcock of solar inspection company
AboveSurveying says he sees “so much
development in drones having a level of
intelligence to make their own decisions about
what they do: we could in future foresee a drone
that, when it identifies a defect, can go to a lower
height to record more detailed imagery before
flying on, whereas at the moment, this is done
manually in post-processing.This should develop
quite quickly over the next couple of years as
the industry produces more solutions for this kind
of space.”
Ben Gorham, director of UK-based Sky
Revolutions, has a note of caution:“Autonomous
systems do take a lot of the emphasis off the
pilot, but you have to look at things in case they
might not always go to plan – you need to be
confident in the pilot’s competence to take over,
despite override buttons and fail safes.”
In the following pages we will examine in
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detail all these developments, offering insights @PEimagzine
for those companies that are already utilizing
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drones and those who are thinking about
making their first moves with an ‘eye in the sky’.
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 Drones focus
Above and
beyond
traditional inspections
The business case for drones is
impressive across the energy
sector, but their adoption has
been slow. Tildy Bayar spoke
with four drone technology firms
to find out how their offering
can help energy companies
4 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_4 4
T
he use of unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs), or drones, in the energy sector is
in its infancy, with many companies still
unsure about the value drones could bring to
their operations. But this market segment is a
fast-growing infant with a potentially bright
future. In a recent report, professional services
consultancy PwC valued the addressable
market of drone-powered solutions in the power
and utilities sector at $9.46 billion, and it’s easy
to see why when you look at the business case
for drones across power generation, transmission
and distribution.
We spoke with four drone companies
working in the energy sector to find out what
they do, and how they think their offering can
help energy firms. On the surface, these
companies all do the same thing: substituting
unmanned drone inspection technology for
manned aerial, rope-access or on-foot
inspections. But each firm is different depending
largely on two factors: who their customer base
is, and what they do with the data post-flight.
Data-based decision making
Mantas Vaskela is chief executive of Lithuania-
based Laserpas, which uses drones to perform
inspections of T&D infrastructure worldwide. He
said the business case for drone use is clear if
utilities are “willing to move from time-based
decision making to data-based decision
making”.
“The way transmission and distribution
companies spend their money is not as
maximally efficient as it could be,” he says,
“because the majority of what they do and the
ways they invest are based on a presumption
that the oldest line they have is the worst line
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2/13/18 10:27 AM

they have. I have seen numerous times where
a ten-year-old transmission line is in horrible
condition and a 40-year-old line is in excellent
condition. Even small things like kids peeling off
paint can create huge problems.
“With our technology, by doing analysis –
thermal, laser, optical, ultraviolet and other kinds
– we can see all the various problems every
single component in a line has, which allows
us to tell the company ‘This section of even a
brand-new line is coming close to failure due
to environmental factors’.
“By providing this information we can help
companies to invest more efficiently and in a
way which actually delivers better results.”
Will Hitchcock is founder and Managing
Director at UK-based Above Surveying, which
uses drones to inspect utility-scale solar PV
installations. He says drone-based
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1802PEI_5 5
Credit: Texo
thermographic cameras that can measure
heat are the ideal solution to a solar sector
problem.
“Before the advent of UAV, thermography
was rarely carried out across more than 10 per
cent of a solar site, if that,” he explains. “It was
usually reduced in scope because of the cost.
And if you’re doing it by hand you’re often
shading your own image, and the camera
angle to the panel is not necessarily going to
give you the correct result. The drone doesn’t
suffer from that as it is high enough away and
stabilized.
“On a large solar farm, even 5 MW, you will
have 26,000+ modules and you’re probably
going to have two to three people doing that
work by hand, and you can’t necessarily
guarantee the consistency of what they’re
doing.”
Power Engineering International February 2018
Drones focus
Many issues with solar panels, he says, are
undetectable through other inspection and
monitoring techniques. But now that more
detailed information can be provided using
drones, the sector is taking notice.
“The bulk of our work over the last two years
has been warranty-based, around payment
milestones or technical due diligence,”
Hitchcock says. “Really understanding the
health of your modules is very important in
paying a milestone to a contractor or acquiring
a new asset.”
David Williams is Principal Compliance
Officer at Texo Drone Survey and Inspection Ltd,
also based in the UK.The firm works with energy
industry clients including onshore and offshore
wind, conventional power generation assets
and T&D.
A good example of how drones can add
value to operations and maintenance, Williams
says, would be “a gas turbine site where they
need a five-year mandatory inspection on the
exhausts. We offer internal inspection services,
using caged drones for confined spaces where
you can’t or wouldn’t want to put a human.
Deployment is quicker and there’s no need for
traditional manual access methods or working
at height.
“Another advanced technology for the
power industry we operate is drone-mounted
UV corona payloads, which allow visualization
of the corona effect on power lines that are
invisible to the naked eye,” he adds. “It’s a UV
data capture sensor that can inspect electrical
components and detect faults that allow
operators to act before catastrophic failure
becomes imminent.
“You’re always going to need rope access
personnel for repair and maintenance,” he
cautions,“but certainly there’s a move towards
minimizing putting people at risk for inspections,
whether visual or otherwise. For example, we’ve
developed a UAV-deployed ultrasonic thickness
testing technology. We use a probe with a gel
on it to ensure that, rather than being used just
for stand-off visual inspections, we can now
make full contact. This removes the need for
inspection using rope access techniques and
is quicker, safer and more cost-effective.
“The same sensor technology is used by the
rope access teams, but we’ve managed to
integrate it fully with drone technology. We have
in development an advanced version that will
look at paint thickness as well, and also
alternating current field measurement (ACFM)
technology looking at weld fatigue on pylons.”
And drones can also improvise solutions to
pre-existing problems.Williams adds:“We worked
recently with an international offshore wind
5
2/13/18 10:27 AM
 Drones focus

turbine operator and, on the back of a need

they identified, we developed the world’s and
industry’s first UAV-integrated winch system for
the supply and retrieval of loads up to 10 kg.”
Harjeet Johal is Vice-President of Energy
Infrastructure at US drone solutions firm Measure.
He outlines numerous use cases for drones
across the power sector, including for utility-
scale wind and solar farms, transmission lines,
hydropower (using submersible drones) and
thermal plant. Drones can improve efficiency,
speed, safety and cost from a power project’s
design, pre-construction and development
stages through to commissioning and ongoing
maintenance, he says.
The value proposition Johal outlines for
utilities covers inspection of power lines, towers
and other structures, poles and substations. For Credit: Laserpas

example, in inspecting transmission and

distribution lines, he says: “Today people use
two methods: [manned] helicopters for high
voltage lines away from urban areas, and in
suburban or urban areas where the voltage
tends to be lower, the most common way to
inspect is ground patrolling.
“An army of linemen walk the distribution or
transmission lines, looking up for possible
defects. If there is something that needs
attention they have to climb up the tower or
pole and do a more thorough inspection. This
is a dangerous job with hazardous conditions,
and they are using their best judgment to
evaluate whether the infrastructure is intact
and all components are healthy.
“This is where drones come in handy,” he
says, as they could “supplement some of the
Credit: Laserpas
work ground patrolling is being used for today.
That could take two forms, either deploying
drones on miles and miles of infrastructure, or technology – ‘We do drones, we do laser Texo is “not just a UAV company, we’re a
the drone as part of a toolkit. Instead of using scanning’,” he says. “We are trying to base precision data acquisition company with world-
his eyes to inspect the towers, a lineman could ourselves on customer problems. Very simply, first survey and inspection technology”.
be using a drone to take a few pictures, and we want them to ask: ‘How do I know that if I “Our creation of digital-twin assets for clients
instead of using his best judgment he can look invest some money here it will increase my with the ability to overlay thermal, multispectral,
at the facts.” metrics, achieve better results, pay off better hyperspectral and visual data, all on a highly
dividends to my shareholders?’.” accurate laser-scanned 3D model, is truly
‘It’s not about the drone’ However, a fleet of drones does bring in unique. But it’s what the client does with the
A common theme among all four firms is that business. “I’ll be very frank,” Vaskela says. “The data, and how they can change their spend
the drone, while it may be the sexiest and most technology opens a lot of doors because we’re profile, that makes the difference,” he adds.“We
visible part of their offering, is really the least dealing with an engineering industry, and have bespoke software that allows the client
important. These companies would like to be engineers like our technology.” to access the data we’ve captured in an
viewed, not as drone-flying outfits, but as data- But Laserpas is “not a company which has actionable information format. Having an
driven asset management firms, and they all a technology looking for a problem, we are a inspection regime that isn’t just reactive or fixed
say that how they process and offer the drone- company which knows a problem,” he says. on failure can improve their CAPEX spend profile
captured data is what differentiates them from “Long-term, we will operate more as a data based on viable engineering data.
each other. As Vaskela puts it in describing processing company than a data collection “The technology we’ve developed helps us
Laserpas, “We are a sophisticated asset company, but today we need to do both get through the door, but clients need more
management company that also does because nobody else does the data collection than ‘Look at our latest bit of tech’; they’re
fieldwork”. how we need it to be done.” looking for end-to-end service. No two clients
“A lot of companies base themselves on the This point is echoed by Williams, who says are the same: some have their own engineering

6 Power Engineering International February 2018 www.PowerEngineeringInt.com

1802PEI_6 6 2/13/18 10:27 AM

 Drones focus

Credit: Above Surveying

software and are looking for an infill of data; others are looking for a full
inspection report. We have inspection engineers on our team as well,
so if a client wants full service with a signed-off thermographic inspection
report, we will provide them with that.”
As his background is in the solar sector, Hitchcock says he founded
Above Surveying to solve an industry problem: how to accurately inspect
100 per cent of the modules across large-scale PV installations. But at
the same time he notes that “our business is all about delivering
thermographic data and analytics, which has only really been possible ARE YOU ALREADY
since the advent of the drone”.
In the rapidly growing solar sector, he says,“Different types of failure
mechanisms and degenerative problems with solar panels, which might
INTO PROFINET?
not be properly understood now, can be identified and assessed using
drone-based inspections and analytics. One degenerative problem Profinet is the communication standard of
solar panels can suffer from is PID – potential-induced degradation.The
the future. Unlimited address room and
industry is really just beginning to understand its impact, how it starts,
how to tackle it, and how well the panels will recover.
flexible topology provide long-term security
“Within the drone, varying levels of irradiation will show PID in different of investment. Profinet is a worldwide
ways. Understanding and interpreting the irradiation against the amount standard:
of hot cells in that pattern is a relatively new thing the sector is getting
our heads around. This awareness has been brought about or
AUMA’s electric actuators are capable of
accelerated by the use of drones for inspections.The drone shows it far Profinet communication and more:
earlier than any other assessment method.” ■■ Integral topology recognition
■■ Configuration of communication
Johal says drones are “a tool to make business processes more
efficient, safer and more cost-effective. A drone is a commodity and
anyone can buy one, but customizing it to business processes and parameters via Profinet
operating it effectively is where the value really is.” ■■ Redundant communication thanks to MRP
To this end, Measure offers what it calls a ‘drone as a service’ concept, ■■ Advanced auto diagnostics
as well as a drone toolkit.“The services aspect pans out in areas where
■■ Supports Asset Management Systems
you need more complex inspections or more detailed photos,” Johal
says, “and also can be used in instances where the company needs ■■ Automation of all valves within one
some help post-outage or post-disaster.Toolkits could find use cases in installation
some of these instances, but the low-hanging-fruit business idea is that
Discover our comprehensive
a lineman can use a drone to make his job easier where inspections
automation solutions
are somewhat less complicated.
“The drone’s pictures can potentially be sent back for analysis, but www.auma.com
linemen do not typically integrate inspection work with back-end
processing. The lineman is not sending 10,000 pictures back to the
control room because, if that is the case, you’re going more towards
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1802PEI_7 7 2/13/18 10:27 AM

 Drones focus
Credit: Measure
Looking to the skies
While the future looks bright for drones in the
energy sector, a number of challenges remain.
Measure’s Johal says one challenge for drone
companies is that adoption has been slower
than expected, with most organizations
“currently at the early adopter stage” and,
overall, a reluctance to try new technologies.
“Of course there are companies and entities
who quickly realize the value of automating and
the economics of upscaling drone operations
across their infrastructure,” he says.“Then again,
companies would like to see how their peers are
doing and learn from their successes or failures.
“The adoption rate is a challenge, but that
is true for any new technology. It is a challenge
and an opportunity to educate the industry on
the value drones bring to the table and why it’s
important to avail themselves of this technology
sooner rather than later.”
While there are not yet international standards
or a global drone trade body,Texo’s Williams says
a number of industry associations are “very keen
to help their members understand what they
should be looking for when commissioning a
drone operator.
“We work very closely with the Engineering
Construction Industry Training Board and CIRIA,
the construction industry body, to help develop
guidelines for their members so they know the
questions to ask. We’re very keen to work with
these types of bodies to raise the bar across the
industry.”
Regulations, which sometimes differ
significantly from country to country, are also a
challenge. The most important is the Beyond
Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) rule, which states
that a pilot cannot fly a drone beyond where
8 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_8 8
Credit: Texo
she can see it. The sector is hopeful that this
regulation may be relaxed in future, which Johal
says would enable drones to compete much
more effectively with manned helicopter flights.
“The industry is working towards this, but it won’t
happen tomorrow,” he says.
In the UK, the VLOS is specified as 500 metres
away from the pilot and 120 metres from ground
level. “Ordinarily, for basic visual inspection or
thermographic inspection, that would be
sufficient,” says Williams. “That said, there are
specific applications where BVLOS is the most
effective solution. For inspection of a wind turbine
several km offshore, it is more efficient if we can
do that from the shore as opposed to having to
do a vessel transfer.
“There is a move towards BVLOS and
extended VLOS which would take you up to
1500 metres and beyond,” he notes. “We have
the technology for that now, and regulators are
starting to work closely with operators. ”
Since these companies have evolved their
business models to work with the energy sector
as it stands now, how will they fare in an
increasingly decentralized energy system?
Johal says Measure is already on it.
“We’re using drones today to inspect
distributed generation assets, whether rooftop
solar, carports or community-based solar,” he
says.“On the development side, before a rooftop
PV system even gets onto a building, the
developers want to present a ROI: how many
panels will be needed, shading issues from
trees, obstructions etc, and the drone value
scheme can be used during that phase.
“Going into the operational phase, a lot of
these assets are leased.The owner is someone
else whose job is to maintain and operate the
equipment. For example, if a community has
200 homes and buildings equipped with solar
PV, a person would need to use a ladder to do
inspections, which can take many days. Instead,
they could use drones to more efficiently
pinpoint the panels that require repair
work.”
In terms of technology development,
Laserpas’s Vaskela believes that “we will have
slightly more developed, better and more
automatic solutions”, and that “in the long term
drones will become easier to use and much
more versatile, and it will be easier to get different
kinds of equipment for them.”
Above Surveying’s Hitchcock says there is
“such a huge amount going on in the drone
technology space around AI and automation
that, in the future, you will see drones operating
autonomously across large-scale solar assets,
seeking out, analyzing and reporting defects on
demand.”
On the business side,Texo’s Williams believes
that, in future,“there will be a lot of consolidation”
in the drone sector. “There are over 3700
licensed commercial drone operators in the
UK, and the vast majority of them are micro
operators with single UAV systems,” he says.
“There are many applications for that entry-level
offering, but many are struggling to find enough
work in the current environment. In the next few
years, I’d expect many of the smaller operators
will move out of the industry and there will be
consolidation among the larger commercial
companies, leaving just a handful of go-to firms
for high-end industrial inspection work.”
Visit www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
for more information
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2/13/18 10:27 AM

From hardware supplier
to software solution
Danish company Scopito has gone
from a drone hardware developer
and inspection operator to a
purely software solution provider.
Diarmaid Williams finds out how
S copito’s origins in drone inspection have
given it a great understanding of the
needs of utilities, and have helped the
Danish company provide a highly effective
software solution for the power market.
it made this transition The company’s 100 per cent Cloud-based
software enables backup of all images
captured during drone inspections, and
seamless sharing of images and reports with
customers, repair crews and infrastructure
specialists. It’s a tailored approach, with the
software also allowing role assignment and
rights for all client contacts.
When chief executive and founder Ken Falk
started the company, he was excited about
the possibilities of drones operating in the utility
space and concentrated efforts on putting
their technology at the service of power line
operators. Even though it didn’t work out quite
as he originally envisaged, Falk was to learn a
great deal about the issues facing grid
operators.
“When I started out and quit my old job, I
basically knew that I wanted to do something
in drones but wasn’t 100 per cent sure where
to focus. It started out with me developing a
www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
1802PEI_9 9
Drones focus
drone four years ago, one that could fly for
about an hour, with a good camera payload.
It hadn’t been on the market and I thought it
was the best product in the world and everyone
was going to buy it.“
How utilities viewed the product was to focus
minds at Scopito, and indeed change its
direction of travel.
“I spoke to some utility companies and
power line firms and they didn’t really care
about the drone – they just wanted inspections
as a service and that’s basically how we started
in that business. We decided to focus only on
power lines because we thought it would be
very important to keep this focus and stay
ahead of competition.
“We were quite fortunate to start out with
such a narrow focus on power line inspections
because we got really deep into understanding
the needs of these organizations.”
One such organization was Denmark’s
biggest grid operator, Energienet, and a
mutually beneficial relationship developed. A
strong collaborative process between the two
would later inform the software they developed
to serve the industry.
Power Engineering International February 2018 9
2/13/18 10:27 AM
 Drones focus
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“We learned how their workflow works so that we could make
something that works effectively in their organization and with their
existing systems. It has been crucial that we had that customer contact
from the very beginning.” And so, in the summer of 2016, Scopito sold
off the inspection business to focus solely on its software platform and
making it available to operators and utilities that had the same problems
the Scopito team encountered themselves when performing inspections.
Falk, a software engineer himself, is in no doubt about the benefit
of having that initial, hands-on experience.“Because we focused solely
on the power line inspections, I think we were quite fortunate to realize
very early on that the limiting factor would probably be the software
and managing your data effectively.”
The inside track knowledge gained meant an easier transition to
an entirely software focus, and a more informed conversation with utility
clients. Four years ago the use of drones in the utility space was largely
virgin territory, but those clients soon saw the value at hand.The greater
challenge of effectively managing all of the data captured would soon
also become apparent.
“They saw the image quality was much better than anything else,
they appreciated our focus and they started ordering inspections. We
were delivering 5000 to 10,0000 images, normally for small inspections,
and they were sitting with a picture viewer and copy-pasting images
to Power Point slides. So, we really didn’t need to explain the need for
the system – they were very aware that this wasn’t a scalable way to
do things.”
Scopito’s offering is intuitive and easy to use. Take, for example, one
recent project which involved surveying 300 metres of power line, a task
that produced around 5500 images. Operators upload the data and
automatically put it in the system with GPS locations. Mapping can be
used to filter that data.A particular pylon, for example, will have changing
thumbnail views and it’s easy to read the accompanying relevant data.
“Load speed is also important, Falk says.“In the old way you might
have to wait five seconds for an image to load, which isn’t workable
when there are potentially so many to view.
“The client can perform analysis themselves and we also offer to do
pre-screening, or what we call downsizing, of the images.They educate
us on what to look for in terms of issues and they can request that we
just show them the relevant ones. Instead of the 5500 images, it would
typically be refined to 5–10 per cent which experts need to go through.”
Scopito refers to the process as facilitating ‘the right expertise at the
right time’.
“They can spend the time where their resources are needed, so
persons whose knowledge is limited can spend time looking through
90 per cent of the images and people with higher expertise may only
have to look through 5–10 per cent of the images.”
“We believe this is what artificial intelligence will do as well: take the
big workload off so that the experts can make their evaluations.”
Once faults on power lines, for example, are identified, images are
annotated, and the viewer can also see what has previously been
annotated, with data on corrosion or short circuit incidents. Falk pinpoints
a case where a short circuit had occurred but the use of traditional
inspections over a seven-year period had failed to uncover the culprit
damage. The very first use of a drone immediately led to discovery.
Reporting is also an essential aspect to the service and those
automatically generated PDF reports provide comprehensive views,
with all imagery and annotated detail together.
“In the beginning we didn’t have the report generation option and
we just added it as a basic feature before realizing it’s probably the
most important aspect of the product – but we didn’t know that until
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2/13/18 10:27 AM
 Drones focus

energy such as microgrids, there is still great

we started getting closer to our customers. We
are getting requests from clients now for more
customized reporting. At the moment it’s still
quite generic, though there is scope for some
customization, particularly with thermal district
heat network inspections (leak analysis etc)
– the workflow is a bit different there.”
Falk says that although it’s commonly held
that outage prevention is the chief means of
reducing costs associated with drone usage,
the main gains, in terms of savings on man-
hours, equipment and spare parts, are to be
found elsewhere.
“The biggest cost saving is not what we call
the direct cost savings – cost in turning off the
power, getting a person to climb or getting a
crane up there. There still needs to be a good
business case to send up the drones, and it
usually is cheaper, but by far the largest cost
savings occur when you do your maintenance
and repair planning.”
One such example involved an operator
who sent a drone up to check repairs performed
earlier, then discovered fresh issues, in this case
a need to change insulators that had rusted.
“Instead of having two operations, they
could do it in one, and that saved a lot of time
because they need to mobilize the people and
shut off the power every time. When they
decided to change the insulators, they didn’t
have exact data about what brackets and tools
they needed, and normally they would have a
person climb the pylon again before they did
the maintenance. Now they could basically
take up the inventory and say,‘Well, it’s this kind
of insulator or these kinds of brackets we need’.”
While the rapidly evolving power system is
seeing more and more integration of distributed
development in transmission lines, which is
where Scopito puts much of its resources.
“There is a lot of renewable energy being
generated around the coastlines and in
Germany, for example, it’s needed to get to the
industrial areas in the middle and south. They
are planning 20,000 km of new transmission
lines in the next five years, so I think the market
is expanding.”
Scopito may have indirectly found its focus
moving from hardware to software in its
beginnings, but there is great certainty in how
its management wants to see the company
progress.
”We have a clear strategy towards
automation,” says Falk.“Today it’s still a manual
process to analyze images. We see a lot of
websites at present that claim to have
automation, but with all the customers we speak
to, no one has a working system yet. We are not
there yet, but our strategy is very clear. In drone
analysis you annotate all the faults, and this is
basically the recipe for enabling artificial
intelligence and algorithms.”
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 Drones focus
The eye in the sky
delivering ‘golden’ data
Elaine Whyte, UK drones leader
T
he good thing about drones is that “they
for global consultancy PwC, give you an absolutely definitive,
explains to Diarmaid Williams repeatable recorded golden thread of
how drones can overcome information”.
many of the inspection So says Elaine Whyte, a director at global
challenges faced by power and consultancy PwC and its UK drones leader.
utility companies Previously, she spent 20 years as an engineer
with the Royal Air Force, so she is well aware of
the advantages drones have offered in the
defence sector.
Drones can spend longer in the air than a
typical air crew, and can provide more extensive
data to the operator. The parallels can easily
be drawn with power utilities.
“In businesses like those in the power sector,
who are reliant on the integrity of their large
network, they are currently just beginning to
12 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_12 12
appreciate the value that drones can deliver,”
Whyte says. “Most of the companies currently
use helicopters of some description, and of
course drones are such a cost-effective way to
collect the data that was previously, and
expensively, collected by helicopters.
“It’s still at an early adoption stage but will
rapidly catch on, so that it will become business-
as-usual to use them.”
Interest is growing, and any mystique around
the use of the machines is reducing over time
– it’s finally being understood that the drone is
simply a mechanism to get access to hard to
reach environments, facilitating the collection
of data valuable to the utility itself.
“Drones can cover the range quickly and
collect data efficiently,” says Whyte. “If you are
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2/13/18 10:27 AM

reliant on your network to deliver your output
and it is dispersed, as it is in a power and utility
environment, or if it is in an offshore area, there
can be challenges to looking at particular
assets at height.
“Drones become a really effective way of
getting the data and understanding the
condition of those assets.”
In October last year, PwC released an eye-
catching report on the potential of the
technology, and announced a complementary
facility of its own.
The commercial market for drone technology
applications across the global power and
utilities industry could be worth as much as
$9.46 billion a year up to 2021 according to
PwC’s analysis.
www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
1802PEI_13 13
This analysis is featured in the report,
Leveraging Drone Technologies for Utilities, which
looks at how drones are disrupting the way
companies build, operate and maintain their
networks. By turning to drones to solve some
of the industry’s most difficult problems, creative
utilities managers are not only increasing the
reliability of their systems but also increasing
worker safety.
Value chain benefits
The consultancy’s own contribution is its
Geospatial.App software. This app allows the
integration, presentation and management of
mapping data gathered by drones equipped
with visual, infrared and other cameras. This is
useful across areas such as monitoring
Power Engineering International February 2018
Drones focus
infrastructure construction, tracking the need
for maintenance and assessing damage after
natural or man-made disasters.
Whyte likes to think in terms of the entire
value chain when it comes to the benefits of
what are also known as unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs).
“It’s the hardware, the actual data accrued
from it and the value in how you extrapolate
that data for business benefit,” she says. “For
power and utilities, it could be the maintenance
condition of their asset. It could potentially be
about examining how vegetation is interfering
with those assets, helping them target their
maintenance programme in a more perceptive
way so that those assets maintain their usage.
If you take oil and gas, $7 million is an accepted
figure per day if the facility has to shut down.”
The proliferation of distributed and renewable
energy resources must be an obvious area for
the technology to show its worth, while helping
utilities to adapt to a new and challenging
paradigm. Whyte agrees.
“Take the example of solar energy. There is
an infrared sensor on a drone that can detect
where your cold spots are on a particular solar
farm.You can target where your technician can
be directed to – that one spot that isn’t delivering
power output.
“I don’t know how they would normally
achieve that precise level of information
gathering, and this is the good thing about
drones: they give you this absolute definitive,
repeatable recorded golden thread of
information.
“If you were to take it to a capital project,
flying a drone once a week will give you that
absolute record of activity at the likes of
Sellafield or other large-scale power projects.”
The Geospatial.App developed by PwC
facilitates the understanding of the data being
accumulated.
“When you collect information from a drone,
the data has to be manipulated, ordered and
viewed in a certain way and you view it through
the geospatial app – it is the mechanism that
you see presented to you at the front. It’s user-
friendly and much more intuitive to use,” explains
Whyte.
“As you can imagine, there are thousands
of data points collected from looking over a
particular area that are pretty useless if they
are not presented to you in a human interface.
The app means a human can understand,
and you will always have a human in the loop.”
Capital projects
Back to the use of drones on capital projects,
and Whyte outlines just some of the ways the
13
2/13/18 10:27 AM
 Drones focus
technology can help provide different
perspectives and valuable knowledge of what
is going happening on the ground, vital when
the expense of such undertakings is considered.
“Drones are an excellent asset in a capital
project. Understanding all moving parts on a
site is challenging but the accuracy you can
collect from these drones is at a quantity
surveyor level.
“You can capture that image and a
programme manager at the site can have
confidence to be able to view how all your
assets are working together.You could use it to
identify complications on an enormous site.
You can use the drone information through the
app to demonstrate, for example, where your
access routes are for your workers on a daily
basis as this can change frequently. You can
use it to view how much earth is being removed
and what assets you have to hand at any one
time.
“So, complete asset management as well
as programme controls – be that variants of
costs and change requests from suppliers
during builds. What you have with drone site
coverage is an absolute record of where the
site is at any particular point in time so you can
trace back that decision making when a
change comes through.
“Drones are not going to drive a whole new
segment of any business, but what they will do
is enhance the insight that people have and
therefore make their programme management
more effective, achieving a productivity edge.”
“Utilities have got a real opportunity to drive
the technology agenda as well from a national
infrastructure perspective, which is particularly
relevant to the UK at the moment – and that
has to be a good thing.”
Growing awareness
Drone companies are beginning to find their
feet in the UK.
ABJ Drones started in the middle of 2017,
14 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_14 14
but their parent company is well-established in
the US.
Managing director Mark Caney says the UK
operation is to benefit from long experience in
utility inspections in several countries, particularly
with regards to cell towers, power lines and wind
turbines.
Caney says there is a growing awareness
of what drones can do, but still some confusion
on how to go about integration.
“It’s slow in that most of the organizations
that could benefit from it are aware that there
are benefits but are not really clear how to
access them. I’m not really seeing the kind of
takeup yet that we will see in the next five years.”
Wind turbine operators would vouch for the
value associated with UAVs, and it looks a likely
source of deployment, with the UK’s leadership
role in that sector.
“Most companies are reporting savings of
at least 30–60 per cent once they fully deploy
drone-based solutions,” says Caney.“You don’t
have to have humans ascending the turbine,
which takes time, and you avoid the safety
issues involved in putting a person on an
elevated platform.
“You can send drones up with standard
cameras and extreme zoom lenses. They can
read bar codes and serial numbers of individual
components, so you zero in and can identify
everything being observed. It can identify signs
of damage, signs of wear, facilitating timely
inspections and maintenance.
“You can also use multi-spectrum cameras,
infrared cameras that can see stress indicators
not visible to the naked eye. When you detect
something wrong you can send up personnel
that can do what is required.
“What you can’t do with a drone is fix the
problem in all cases, but you can dramatically
cut down the length of time you are looking at
the problems.”
Inspection of overhead transmission lines
and heat networks is another area of potential
gain in building and maintaining an efficient
power infrastructure in an affordable manner,
minimizing labour and identifying problems in
advance.
“You can fly a drone along a power line and
do a LiDAR survey where you can map exactly
where the power lines are, the degree of
curvature in the cable and, significantly, you
can map the vegetation on either side of the
power line. A common problem with power
lines is you get a big storm and a tree falls,
resulting in outages for a significant amount of
time.
“You can also look at line insulation through
an infrared camera to see if there is any
evidence of whether it is breaking down or
losing its function.”
An important element to the work is the
reduction of downtime, as inspections can be
carried out without turning off the power. This
is opposed to traditional means where a team
would be sent up and power would be turned
off.
“We also have the capability to fit RFID (Radio
Frequency Identification) tags on individual
components such as pylons so, flying a drone
nearby, you can immediately identify the asset
involved and log that whole process.This allows
for a far quicker and cost-effective inspection
of assets than traditionally done manually.”
As mentioned, ABJ has the advantage of
already being established in the Americas, and
will simply be redeploying hard-won expertise
in the EU/UK geographies: “We don’t have to
go through the big learning curve that we first
had to experience when developing this
technology,” says Caney.
European and UK regulations are set to be
introduced this month and on into 2019, and
Caney is ideally positioned to see the benefits
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2/13/18 10:27 AM

of this legislation come on board. He says: “I
think those regulations will generally be for the
benefit of the technology. I’m personally
involved as a member of the BSI Committee
that participates with the ISO Standards Group
in helping to create those standards.
“This industry needs regulation, but sensible
regulation, and fortunately most of the big
players involved, including the government,
can see there is a lot of money that can be
saved by industrial drones being used so they
want to develop a reasonable working
environment.”
One area the regulatory bodies are
examining is centred around ‘line of sight’ or
permitted drone reach. It’s something a lot of
work has gone into, as regulatory bodies are
understandably cautious about incorporating
drones into the overall air traffic control system.
“At the moment, operating drones is limited
to line of sight where you have the pilot on the
ground and you need to be able to see the
drones at all times,” says Caney.
“We are expanding that envelope so you
can fly the drones beyond line of sight and
make much better use of that flexibility – the
main limitation at the moment is the speed of
creating regulations because the industry is
very dynamic and the technology is going
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1802PEI_15 15
ahead quite rapidly, and it’s quite hard to write
the regulations fast enough to keep up with it.”
Market potential
Dan Maine, head of DJM Aerial Solutions, an
operator headquartered in northeast England,
is making its first inroads into the power sector.
A hydraulic mechanical engineer with long
experience in the oil and gas sector, Maine
knows there is much market potential to realize
in the power area.
While wind turbine jobs have so far proven
hard to crack, Maine’s firm is having more joy
in the energy-from-waste area.
“We have had our equipment sought after
for use at energy-from-waste biomass sites.These
are for internal inspections for boilers or furnace.
These need to be inspected regularly as part
of their preventative maintenance programme,
and normally they would have to shut down
the furnace, erect a scaffold and get permits
before they even do an inspection.They ask us
to come in and do the same thing with a drone,
and we perform it quicker and with a shorter
shutdown.”
The extent of tech that can be carried by a
drone is illustrated by Maine’s description of a
recent equipment purchase.
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Power Engineering International February 2018
Drones focus
a Matrice 210,” says Maine.“There’s a lot of dual
redundancy involved in terms of motor control.
You’ve got a digital and analog supply for each
motor, so if one fails the other allows it to
continue. You’ve got a dual battery operation
for the same reason, surrounding sensors so as
to prevent going headlong into something or
when in reverse mode. It’s similar to a
360-degree forcefield, if you like, with a built-in
FTP camera which allows you essentially to see
what the drone sees.
“You’ve got the ability to mount the camera
on top of the UAV to give you a better look at
any overhanging structures or bridges or the
like.The camera also has access to a Z30, which
has a 30x optical zoom and 6x digital – so
180x zoom capability while still getting a clear
image.”
As the UK adapts to a more competitive era,
utilities work harder to optimize costs and
regulations begin to facilitate adoption, drone
technology is set for a rapid upward trajectory
over the coming decade.
Diarmaid Williams is International Digital
Editor of PEi
Visit www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
for more information
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2/13/18 10:27 AM

Drones focus
Taking technology
beyond the line of sight
Paul Frey of Sharper Shape talks to Diarmaid Williams, highlighting the company’s efforts to take its
technology ‘beyond the line of sight’ and explaining why the Trump administration augurs well for the
drone sector
A
lthough not a drone manufacturer,
Sharper Shape provides one of the
world’s most advanced aerial sensor
systems with technology that powers the
automatic collection and analysis of unmanned
aerial inspection data.
Its roots can be traced back to Finland in
the 1990s, and a major European academic
project investigating automated methods for
analysing LiDAR point cloud data for utility right
of way and vegetation management efforts.
“The project was run by the Finnish
Geospatial Research Institute,” says vice-
president of sales, Paul Frey. “They had some
problems with vegetation encroachment on
electric utility power lines and the Finnish
government wanted to solve that problem, so
they worked with the Institute to develop that.
By 2011, the project had created the world’s
first small drones with LiDAR scanning
capabilities and by June of 2013, Sharper Shape
had indeed commercialized this research and
started business operations in Finland.
“We then received permission from the Civil
Aviation Authority in Finland to start flying our
devices beyond line of sight. That’s really the
first time to our knowledge that was permitted
for commercial applications. Once we started
that with Finnish utilities, there was quite a bit
of success and we began to move beyond
Finland, acquiring contracts in India, China and
Peru, and we started reaching into the US.”
As the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
created the framework for commercial
unmanned aerial systems (UAS) applications
16 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_16 16
in the US, Sharper Shape re-formed as a privately
held American company and moved its
headquarters to Grand Forks, North Dakota, a
drone hub. It continues to operate its
international technical research and
development facility in Espoo, Finland.
Almost immediately after opening its US
offices, Sharper Shape developed a consortium
deal with Edison Electric Institute, where seven
of the EEI member utilities sponsored work
Sharper Shape was involved in, with the aim of
achieving beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS)
in the US for all electric utilities.
‘Beyond line of sight’ refers to long distance
drone inspections of electric transmission and
distribution systems that will optimize the
efficiencies and effectiveness of UAS based
inspections, and if accepted will be the biggest
enabler to UAS inspection of electric
infrastructure in the US.
“The achievement of BVLOS in the US has
been a challenge,” says Frey. “The regulatory
issue here with the FAA has pretty much
prevented close to all commercial operations
from flying beyond visual line of sight in the US.
There has been a couple of experiments in the
US, but even that has been limited.”
In 2016 the FAA started to create a regulatory
framework for commercial UAS operations, and
they created a new set of unmanned aviation
regulations called Part 107. The Part 107 rules
went into effect August 29th 2016 and includes
the ability to request waivers from some of the
most restrictive regulations.
Sharper Shape was one of the first
Credit: Sharper Shape
companies to put in a request for a waiver. It is
currently working to revise its waiver application
based on FAA feedback, and this time will be
adding some additional technology for its
drones to address the FAA concerns in the
attempt to win favour.
The Trump administration’s attitude to the
technology bodes well for the industry,
according to Frey. The company is currently in
contact with more than 30 US electric utilities
interested in its services, and Frey expects a
dramatic increase of its US business in 2018.
“There’s going to be a huge burst in activity
because the current administration is definitely
interested in clearing any roadblocks to
commercial applications. In October, Trump
issued a memo to US Transportation Secretary
Elaine Chao basically stating that he wants
drone opportunities in the US to accelerate as
quickly and as safely as possible.
“As part of that, on November 9, the FAA
issued a request to commercial drone operators
in the US to put in proposals for the FAA UAS
Integration Pilot Program. Basically all of the
operators had to partner with a government
entity, and that government entity would
become the lead applicant for the project to
integrate drones into the national aerospace.
“I believe there are 150 to 200 applicants
who have completed the process, and the FAA
is going to likely authorise between 5 and 10
of these integration projects.”
Sharper Shape with lead applicant the
Sinew Management Group (part of the Three
Affiliated Tribes) has applied to be part of the
www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
2/13/18 10:27 AM

FAA UAS Integration Pilot Program. Sharper
Shape believes it has presented a strong
application and hopes to be selected.
Frey predicts good things for the UAS industry,
and it appears already apparent in North
America, if certain indicators are taken into
account.“At a recent conference I attended, I
found it interesting that there was a patent
attorney who did a presentation on the number
of US patents versus all other country patents
in the drone stakes”
“Up until about 2013, applications for drone
technology patents in the US far outstripped
the rest of the world.Then, US drone applications
started to decline, and among others the
Chinese applications rose significantly. If you
look at the current data, the US is now
outstripped by many nations. It won’t change
unless there is a change in the appetite for
commercial drone services, and the
administration is keen on that.”
The progress on UAS regulations in the US is
set to have a knock-on effect on the company’s
efforts in other regions, according to Frey.
“We have been pursuing some opportunities
going on in South America, and are evaluating
and bidding on projects there. Interestingly
enough, a lot of these countries look to the US
and have similar drone regulations. So as the
US starts to open things up, I expect to see
similar results in South America.”
Although they provide a versatile service
capable of working in many areas across the
utility space, Sharper Shape’s main thrust is in
the inspection of overhead power lines. They
offer two types of service: Automatic Detailed
Inspection and Consolidated Linear Inspection.
“CLI uses a very large drone, a very capable
and heavy-lifting hexacopter which we call the
Sharper A6.
“That drone can capture many streams of
data - oblique and nadir imagery, HD video,
LiDAR, UV and infra-red data, all in one
consolidated stream of data.
“It means basically being able to correlate
all the data with exact location, space and
time. We’re able to very cogently provide that
data to the end user and we do that as a
complete end to end service. The vegetation
management service we provide is still one of
our stronger elements, as it’s where we started
out originally, and have developed a lot of
experience in it.”
The second application the company offers
involves DJI or Pixhawk-based drones with the
ability to perform an automatic detailed
inspection (ADI).
Sharper Shape uses LiDAR to create a
3-dimensional map of the utilities’ assets and
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1802PEI_17 17
then creates an autonomous flight plan that
can be uploaded to any DJI or Pixhawk
autopilot. All the UAS pilot has to do is prepare
the drone, hit start, and then the drone takes
off and flies in very close proximity to the lines
or towers, capturing all of the required
photographic imagery.
“We can do standard photos or infrared
photos or both. Once we have captured that
data we can upload that to our software. Our
user interface is one of the best out there. It
allows the user to understand what perspective
each of the images was taken from. That’s
captured and presented in a very coherent
fashion to the end user.”
The company has also developed a
sophisticated level of automatic issue detection.
Once the data is captured it can be uploaded
to the cloud, several Cloud-based applications
are run against the data. Those apps can
automatically perform an analysis determining
whether there are issues to be addressed or
not. Drone Software As A Service, which the
company has trademarked, is part of the ADI
service, and suits end users with a preference
to do their own flying with their own drones.
Currently transmission and distribution
inspection is the area where Sharper Shape is
most active, solar farm inspections and sock
line pulling are becoming more frequent. One
of their most high-profile jobs involved one of
America’s largest utility.
“We were asked by them to perform line
work. It involved stringing sock or pull lines.These
sock lines enable pulling the heavy transmission
lines into the pulleys when you are constructing
new 765 kV towers. They had asked a couple
of other companies to try to demonstrate this
and we were the first to successfully do it.”
The task was performed with a large
hexacopter with heavy lift capability.The drone
strung the pull lines through sets of transmission
tower insulators. This allowed an intermediary
line to be pulled and ultimately the heavy
transmission line to be pulled through.A fatality,
the loss of a helicopter pilot undertaking a
similar task, had prompted the utility to look for
a drone alternative.
Growing recognition of the company’s
attributes also saw Sharper Shape being sought
out to assist authorities with coping with the
increasingly prevalent superstorms afflicting the
US.
In August, the company signed a long-term
contract for emergency response with another
major US utility and was called in to provide its
services following Hurricane Harvey. In relation
to that experience, the company is preparing
a specific emergency response solution that
Power Engineering International February 2018
Drones focus
has become highly demanded by the utilities
due to increased hurricane activities.
The company also received a positive report
on its activities the previous year when the
Electric Power Research Institute visited Sharper
Shape in Finland. The Institute’s researchers
observed Sharper Shape’s BVLOS flights and
the whole end to end detailed and consolidated
inspection solutions.. Their EPRI representative
concluded that the company’s capabilities
were very advanced.
“For automatic detailed inspection, we stop
at each tower and fly a specific scanning
pattern.
“We start on one side of the tower, inspect
it top to bottom, and then go to the next
structure and do the same thing. We then go
to the opposite side of the line and return home,
repeating the process.
“We get a lot of photos of each of the towers,
and the process is highly automated so there
is little pilot intervention.”
As the drone industry continues to prosper,
there has been some concern about the lack
of experienced or licensed drone pilots on the
ground. So far, this hasn’t been a major problem
for Sharper Shape, thanks in large part to a key
partnership.
“We have a group of pilots in Finland, and
one company pilot on board here in the US.
But we also have a strong partnership with
another company called Sky Scopes, and we
have done a number of operations with them.
They have a group of half a dozen pilots that
can fly these missions and are very experienced
in unmanned aircraft operations.
“We have been able to get the talent we
need to this point. There is explosive growth in
this industry and I hope we have these
problems.”
Another crucial topic for the UAS industry is
the security of the data it is capturing. The
company’s credentials on this subject are
impressive.
“Our chief executive, Ilkka Hiidenheimo,
comes originally from the cybersecurity world.
He created a company called Stonesoft,
developing it from scratch before selling it to
Intel.
“Cybersecurity is a very important part of
our DNA and its part of the fibre of this company
to make sure the data is very secure. We use
and process all of our data on the Amazon
Cloud and and we use secure services on the
Amazon Web Services. Security is very important
to us and our customers.”
Visit www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
for more information
17
2/13/18 10:27 AM
 Drones focus
The autonomous future
When considering the benefits of drones for the energy sector, they must be viewed in conjunction with
a broad spectrum of emerging and disruptive technologies, Thierry Mortier of EY tells Tildy Bayar
L
ast year, global consultancy EY launched
a worldwide network of innovation centres,
dubbed EY wavespace, aimed at helping
their clients to face the challenges and
opportunities involved with continuous change,
digitalization and disruption.
In addition to the firm’s 15 existing locations,
eight new centres on four continents are
planned to feature a shared methodology and
platform for testing ideas related to disruptive
technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI),
robotics process automation, blockchain, data
analytics, digital, customer experience and
cybersecurity. One such technology that EY
has already focused on is the use of drones,
with projects lab-tested across industries
including energy in conjunction with other
disruptive technologies such as blockchain.
We spoke with Thierry Mortier, EY Global Power
& Utilities Innovation Leader, about what drones
can offer the energy sector and how this offering
is expected to evolve.
Q: What is the current state of drone use in the
energy sector?
A: First of all, we can say that drones are a part
of one aspect of the energy industry. Under the
18 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_18 18
heading of robotics, which is a broad category,
there are six other main categories including
AI, automation and IoT. We see drones as a part
of a very broad spectrum of emerging
technologies.
You also need to see drones in connection with
those technologies. Part of the use case or
business case is related to the fact that you can
have equivalents to helicopters or planes, but
cheaper and faster without the pilot – that is
one part.This delivers some benefit as you don’t
need to have helicopter hours, fuel, pilots paid
and so on.
A large part of the effect we see comes from
the fact that drones can do more flights or
inspections, and as such can create more data,
and then through a number of these
technologies such as AI, with automated
processing of data, this can result in much higher
efficiency than what we have seen before.
You need to not just look at the equipment as
such, but at what you can do with it. The
technology is there currently to do something
with that data in a much more automated way.
I’ve seen quite a lot of startups in this area,
smaller companies that now have specific
service offerings in that area. A lot of them, or a
Q&A
number of them, are actually focusing on what’s
called the 80 per cent of non-critical assets.
Most non-critical assets in the past were
monitored by helicopter flights and thermal
imaging. [The industry is] now primarily focusing
on trying to get efficiency in terms of
maintenance costs and asset management
solutions in this 80 per cent of non-critical assets.
One startup in particular is specializing exactly
in those drone solutions combined with data
solutions. They’re able to, for example, perform
vegetation management in more tropical areas
in a very efficient way through a combination
of flights, data generation and imaging, and
this results in an alert system that allows people
to take action just in those areas where there is
vegetation growth around the lines.
We’re at the stage where the solutions are there,
the startups are there, and gradually companies
are adopting those solutions. However, what we
see on the utility side is that new technologies
like drones are not really fully adopted yet as
an asset class to maintain, but also as a means
to do a lot of asset management at present.
Barriers for big corporates are still there, so they’re
more in the stage of experimenting. A branch
of one utility company now has a solution in
www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
2/13/18 10:28 AM

place to monitor solar panels with drones, but
that is not rolled out yet as an actual scheme.
They are experimenting with some initial steps
but don’t have a full fleet available.
Q: Where can drones make the biggest
difference for power generation, transmission
and distribution?
A: The power sector is an asset-heavy industry,
but we see the value primarily in grid, both in
electricity and in gas. And still a lot of change
will be happening in the future with the digital
grid that needs to be built: there is a tremendous
need to observe, monitor and inspect the grid
more than ever.That is absolutely one entrance,
and a side element of that is probably less
towards classic generation because those
environments are controlled, measured and
sensored all over the place, but the biggest
change with regards to generation will be linked
to the growth of renewables, such as wind
turbines and solar panels. Renewables will only
rise, both as central generation but also in
distributed generation.
At EY, we’ve also experimented on that. In our
innovation labs in Paris, we have built a scenario
where we have an autonomous drone flying
www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
1802PEI_19 19
Q&A
out to do inspections of solar panels and through smart contracts. Companies could bid
leveraging blockchain technology. Based on for the contract and the best price would win
the flight, you then ask for maintenance, and if it, and the maintenance company would go
everything is fine then you collect the payment. to the site.
We built that test case in a lab environment to
demonstrate that this is also bit of a collision of Q: What are the barriers to drone adoption for
technologies. In my opinion, a drone as such is energy firms?
not such big deal, but if you bring together all A: First of all, from a more general point of view,
of these technologies you come to use cases you see that utilities have just started looking at
which are very interesting, with very high emerging technologies. Drones are not the only
potential in terms of efficiency and accuracy. thing: robotics, AI and blockchain are all pretty
Ours is a quick-and-dirty prototype but we built
it and it’s there, so we have demonstrated that
it is feasible.
Decreases in efficiency in a solar panel, either
in central generation or a domestic panel, are
detected through the meter or through its yield.
As a result, the information in the blockchain
says ‘send a drone’. Our system uses an
autonomous drone. You can take off from a
launch pad anywhere and fly to the location,
do the inspection, take pictures, apply the
blockchain again, and go back after the
maintenance to see whether the problem has
been corrected.
The use case for this is that you could send out
maintenance requests on the blockchain
Power Engineering International February 2018 19
2/13/18 10:28 AM
 Q&A
new to them, so organizations are not always
set up to experiment with those new
technologies. It requires a change to the
operating model to do this type of
experimentation and develop new solutions to
either increase efficiency or drive additional
revenues. This is where a lot of utilities are
struggling, and are at the early stages.
Secondly, I think there are still some hurdles in
terms of regulations on where you can fly, how
high, which areas you can cover. In urban areas
it’s much more difficult to use drones.
We do see that regulations, particularly for
innovation, will take some time. We see this with
many other technologies, like blockchain and
peer-to-peer trading: there needs to be a
solution and innovation in place, and sometimes
even a precedent, before the regulators will
change.
This also applies, for example, to regulations
and rules to apply certain asset management
solutions.Automatic processing of data through
AI and thermal pictures through drones are
already accepted by the regulator for asset
management inspection.There can be millions
of question marks at this point in time – but a
few utilities are breaking ground and doing
stuff.
A drone of course is a medium of automation,
so in some people it induces fear and resistance
20 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_20 20
to some extent – will it take away my job, is it
going to have an impact on this organization,
why should I adopt this when we have
something today that works pretty well? It’s the
belief of some people that they could do the
job better with individuals, but the fact is that AI
and image recognition are much more efficient
than humans.
Q: What do you predict for the drone sector in
the next five years?
A: These devices are such that we would expect
that they will evolve, although they are in pretty
good shape. I can imagine that we can expect
to see a revolution in autonomous vehicles, to
fly more without pilots. That is coming; the
technology is already there in the military.
And for the processing as such, we’re very
positive about the adoption of AI. Also, for EY,
we see tremendous potential in AI, because at
the end of the day it is a technology that allows
us to solve the biggest problems with very
advanced algorithms.
The great breakthrough is that a lot of the
functionalities in AI are ready and available in
standard suites – this is a very easy way to apply
those functions. Image recognition of thermal
pictures is an API call you can make, and it is
there now. In terms of data processing, availability
of these algorithms in common suites, availability
of data integration with drones, it’s all there, and
we see that really happening in the market right
now. We get a lot of questions from clients
around AI, data processing and forecasting.
Q: What kinds of drone companies will be most
successful in the coming years?
A: I think the companies that will prevail will be
able to operate in an autonomous way, and
will be able to offer more than just “We have a
machine flying around”. They will be able to
develop specific services inside analytics and
predictions, since I don’t believe that utilities will
be able to develop those very specific algorithms
that are required to do all these predictions.
The value is more in algorithms and in data
processing than in just a machine that flies
around. Companies that are able to provide
specific functions and algorithms combined
with a high level of automation to reduce the
cost will win.Those that will be able to integrate
their offerings to the point of asset management
will prevail.
For more information on EY wavespace, visit:
www.ey.com/uk/en/services/advisory/
ey-wavespace
Visit www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
for more information
www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
2/13/18 10:28 AM

Experienced pilots still essential
2018 is expected to herald the
greater emergence of more
autonomous drone technology,
but Sky Revolutions Director Ben
Gorham says, despite the trend,
the presence of an experienced
pilot remains essential. Diarmaid
Williams reports.
www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
1802PEI_Rev_21 21
despite autonomous trend
T
his year, it is predicted we will see stronger
processing power that will allow drones to
become smart sensors, integrating
computer vision and neural network
technologies to analyse data on the
surroundings and mission in real time,
autonomously, without the need for human
direction.
This adds up to drones independently
making decisions, leading to what some
forecast will be swarm technology, with factories
comprising workforces of drones, performing
their tasks and working together.
That futuristic vision may not be right for
every sector, but regardless of sector, it’s a busy
time for drone operators and their resources.
The need for skilled personnel is growing in
tandem.
“The whole industry is getting busier,” says
Ben Gorham, director of UK-based Sky
Revolutions.“We’ve been going over three years
now and January was the busiest month we
have had.”
The benefits of drone technologies have
Power Engineering International February 2018
Drones focus
grown increasingly apparent to the utility sector,
and because of the broader commercial
appeal, have attracted newcomers into
contention.
Peterborough-based Sky Revolutions offers
surveying services, aerial filming and high level
repair and maintenance to construction,
mining, utilities, telecoms, energy, renewables
and facilities management sectors.
“We would consider ourselves to be part of
the top tier in the UK. We note there is an
increasing influx of qualified drone pilots at the
moment. We have been at that position for a
couple of years, when initially setting up as a
drone surveying company – one of the first in
the UK.
“There are other companies like us and at
our level, then there is another band of the
industry which is more small scale. Many of
these are skilled and we employ some on a
sub-contracting basis when we need them.The
energy industry is in the very early stages of
drone adoption and seems to want additional
comfort by placing orders with large companies
21
2/16/18 1:08 PM
 Drones focus
– but the drone industry itself is still embryonic.”
Gorham is keen to point out the difference
between qualified and experienced pilots.
Because of the popularity of the technology,
there appears to be more of the former than
the latter at the current time.
“There are probably 4000 to 5000 qualified
pilots, but the difficulty for us and everyone else
is getting people who have done the job. A
large number have become qualified, but we’ve
got pilots who worked for us, myself included,
who have done numerous complex aerial
surveying jobs with high-end equipment. We
generally fly AscTec Falcon 8s which are
regarded as a market leader.”
The aforementioned advances in software
technology and the push for autonomous
drones is another strand coming into play.There
is some opinion that indicates a gradual
minimizing of the human factor to drone
operations, but taking the landscape as a whole,
experienced pilots are still highly relevant.
“We look at various platforms and software
systems that we integrate for projects, such as
Drone Deploy, but we don’t offer it ourselves at
the moment.
“Many of the new software systems are there
to make a flight autonomous or to manage very
large volumes of data in the cloud, but I believe
the focus must remain on pilot competency for
some time yet, improving the quality of the data
before shaping the systems that deliver it.
“Autonomous systems do take a lot of the
emphasis off the pilot, but you have to look at
things in case they might not always go to plan
– you need to be confident in the pilot’s
competence to take over, despite override
buttons and fail safes.”
Is there more that the industry could put in
place, in terms of grading certification
according to experience accumulated, so that
novice pilots don’t get in over their head?
Gorham believes so, and his company has
systems in place to reduce the chance of
22 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_22 22
mishap.
“It comes down to experience. We would
never put a newly-qualified pilot on a job on his
or her own. Every job we do has teams in pairs
and there will always be someone with a wealth
of experience paired with someone new.”
He says the industry “is full of people now
getting qualified and buying low end systems
and over-offering what they can do and going
out solo”.
“That’s all very well when things go fine, but
the industry needs to wake up to the complex
factors that can impede a survey.The problems
that they can create are best dealt with by
experienced pilots.
“We wouldn’t want to see companies not
working 100 per cent safely and damaging
industry reputation. We need to police ourselves
properly.”
Utilities, in a rapidly-transforming energy
system, have never been under more pressure
to improve efficiencies and bottom line, with
their traditional means of operating under
severe disruption from variables such as
renewable and distributed energy and the
forces unleashed by internet and cloud
technology.
It means what drones can do is becoming
increasingly attractive.
Yet Gorham’s background is in construction
and he’s noticed that the construction industry
has been quicker to take on the technology
than actors in the utility area.
“We are pitching for quite a number of jobs
for power lines and telecoms. The utility sector
has been dubious previously and relied on the
more expensive option of helicopters, but I think
that has gradually changed. The faith in the
drone industry and the expectancy in the data
quality they are going to get has been there for
some time, and now the larger energy
companies are realising it.
“The confidence in the drone industry is there
now and drones have been safe for a number
of years with fail safes and systems built into the
equipment. It is recklessness and pilot error that
generally cause issues.”
The technology Sky Revolutions uses is also
adept at capturing faults in urban heat networks,
with electrical thermal imaging cameras also
used for the same purpose to identify hot spots
on solar panels, as well as problems with resistors
on power lines.
Just last week Airports Council International
(ACI) Europe said today there was “an urgent
need” for a European rulebook on drones as
usage continues to take off.
In a report released last Monday, the trade
body for European airports said the number of
drones has seen a vast rise over the last five
years, and is expected to increase 10-fold
globally from 2015, to almost 68m in 2021.
“When you work in city centres or built up
areas, it’s generally done with an operational
safety case. The ACI wants a European safety
rulebook finalized soon to ensure a common
approach, and to avoid member states setting
up separate rules,” says Gorham.
He adds that the issue is splitting the industry
at the moment, but it is necessary to resolve for
progress sake. Meanwhile towards the end of
last year, the UK government unveiled plans to
set new rules for regulating drones, with those
flying them having to pass safety tests. A new
register for owners of large drones will also be
mandatory.
Regulation is therefore accelerating, and
facilitating a more viable drone service that can
continue to bolster faith in this burgeoning
industry.
It also has crucial government backing, with
aviation minister Baroness Sugg stating last
month that “drones have great potential and
we want to do everything possible to harness
the benefits of this technology as it develops.”
Visit www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
for more information
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2/13/18 10:28 AM
 Drones focus

Q&A
Making sense of flying data
Switzerland-headquartered senseFly was formed in 2009 and operates in Europe, North America and
Australia. Diarmaid Williams spoke to Benjamin Pinguet, the company’s Inspection Product Manager

Q: How does senseFly distinguish itself from

other drone operators?
A: senseFly’s key differentiator from other drone
operators is our focus on delivering highly
accurate, actionable insights through integrated
unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) solutions. In
recent years, we have developed a series of
end-to-end solutions, such as the senseFly
Inspection 360, to support professionals working
on commercial projects in multiple sectors –
from planning flights to making decisions using
collected data.

Q: How does the company view the utilities

sector and what sorts of projects has it been
involved in to date?
A: The versatility of senseFly’s solutions has
resulted in our products being used in a number
of applications within the power and utilities
sector, and we expect this market to continue
growing in coming years.
A recent example is Idaho-based engineering
consulting firm POWER Engineers, which used
a senseFly eBee drone to collect GIS data of a
12-mile corridor prior to the installation of a new
high voltage transmission line in Phoenix,
Arizona. Thanks to the eBee’s in-built safety
features, employees from POWER Engineers
were able to collect accurate, high quality aerial
photography and ground elevations to identify
the most suitable location to install the line, with
little to no risk to existing transmission lines or
facilities in the area.
By using senseFly’s proprietary flight and data
management software, eMotion, POWER
Engineers further streamlined processes and
saved both time and money in future drone
projects.
Q: Can you tell us about the qualities of your
software products and how they can benefit
companies in the power sector?
A: To complement our drone hardware offering,
we developed eMotion, a simple, professional-
grade flight management software. eMotion
includes intuitive mission planning blocks and
flight modes suitable for a range of applications
including the power sector, and enables safer,
more detailed and consistent flight planning
and execution. This faster, more accurate
mapping can facilitate more time and cost-
effective flight planning, enabling power
industry professionals to spend less time
planning projects and more time analyzing
results.
To offer our customers a more integrated
approach to data capture, we recently
introduced our senseFly 360 solutions in verticals
such as surveying and inspection. From flight
planning with eMotion to data processing with
powerful Pix4D photogrammetry software,
senseFly 360 solutions offer professionals in the
power and utilities sector detailed, accurate
insights in real-time to improve the efficiency,
safety and automation of UAV data capture to
support decision making.
This has been possible thanks to the time we’ve
invested in creating strong, strategic partnerships
with software providers such as Pix4D and
Airware, which we will continue to nurture to
maintain the high level of expertise, service and
return-on-investment that our customers expect.

www.PowerEngineeringInt.com Power Engineering International February 2018 23

1802PEI_23 23 2/13/18 10:28 AM

 Drones focus

competitive, and has supported the growth of

its global drone programme.

Q: Are there any learnings from other sectors

Q: Are there any particular regulatory
challenges at the moment to the facilitation
of your technology, or anything you would like
to change?
A: While regulations on the use of drones
continue to evolve, the utilities sector is one of
many industries across the globe that has been
subject to stringent regulatory restrictions on
the use of UAVs in national airspace. Since Part
107 came into effect in August 2016, however,
more and more businesses in the US have been
able to receive certification to carry out missions
in approved airspaces, which has helped to
facilitate much wider adoption of UAVs in
professional applications. Prior to this, special
exemptions were needed in some countries,
which prolonged projects and severely limited
the scope and opportunity for commercial
drone use. We look forward to further
developments in these regulations as
awareness and understanding of the potential
commercial benefits of drones increases
worldwide.
this project has allowed SunPower to gather
data in a fraction of the time needed to
conduct a land survey using terrestrial or
manned equipment, maximizing the efficiency
of SunPower’s prospecting and design cycles.
In an industry where land is a commodity,
operating with greater speed and efficiency
has made it possible for SunPower to remain
that will be useful in helping utilities and power
companies meet their challenges?
A: UAV technology has proven to be highly
effective in a wide range of sectors, and its
capacity to improve the speed and efficiency
of site mapping has facilitated time and cost
savings for businesses worldwide. The uptake
of this technology is, however, more advanced
in some sectors than others. For instance, many
professionals in the surveying industry have
now fully integrated drone solutions into their
workflow and operations, while in the
construction sector, businesses are benefiting
from the increased safety offered by aerial
methods. With power industry professionals
needing to balance accuracy with safety on
site, industries such as construction demonstrate
how the technology can be used to make
informed decisions on a day-to-day basis and
with reduced risk to employees.
Visit www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
for more information

Q: Any current or future projects in the utility

area?
A: Silicon Valley-based global solar technology
company SunPower is using senseFly solutions
in the development of the Gala Solar Power
Plant, which is currently under construction on
a 130-acre site in Oregon, US. As part of its
offering, SunPower provides site evaluation and
layout design services, in which they use drone
technology to collect detailed, accurate site
data.These insights are then used to compare
thousands of potential solar farm layouts to
help inform which option will better optimize
energy production. Using senseFly drones in

24 Power Engineering International February 2018 www.PowerEngineeringInt.com

1802PEI_24 24 2/13/18 10:28 AM


Putting a price on
The significant savings that can
be made by utilizing drone
technology for inspections have
been highlighted at a major
energy conference,
writes Kelvin Ross
www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
1802PEI_25 25
Drones focus
drone savings
T
he World Future Energy Summit in Abu
Dhabi last month heard how using
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) was
achieving savings in all sectors of the energy
industry, from conventional power to renewables.
Riaan Meyer, managing director of UAV firm
GeoSun Africa, cited the example of an 85 MW
solar plant in South Africa.The owner deployed
an inspection using hand-held cameras to find
faults over a period of several months. They
found four module defects. A drone took three
days and found 200.
In another example, he said that another solar
farm was losing $60,000 a year because of
disconnections. For the price of a $15,000 drone
inspection, it stopped those loss-making defects.
Johan Mlouka of Swiss drone company Flyability
said that using a drone at a combined-cycle
Power Engineering International February 2018 25
2/13/18 10:28 AM
 Drones focus
power plant had made fast savings because
$12,000 did not need to be spent on erecting
scaffolding for a human crew to climb. “The
biggest value is the increased safety for workers,”
he said.“How do you put a price tag on a life?”
So what are the challenges for those offering
and those using UAV technology?
“The challenge is that you need to commit
resources,” says Mlouka. “Not only financial for
the capital expenditure, but you need to have
26 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_26 26
skilled people – it’s not just a plug-and-play
technology. You need a pilot that is skilled
enough to get the most out of the flight time.”
And he adds that “drones are like tools, so you
need different drones for different jobs: confined
spaces, critical infrastructure”.
Meyer says that transporting drones can be a
challenge:“Some airlines have not let a drone
on a flight because of the battery.”
Permits to fly are also an issue, he explains. “In
Australia, to fly a drone you need the same
permits as to fly an aircraft. In South Africa, it
takes two years to get a permit to fly a
commercial drone and it’s just as hard in some
other countries.”
He also explains that flying UAVs is “weather
permitting: drones don’t like wind. Sometimes
you have to wait days to inspect – and this can
make it hard for wind farm inspections.”
Johann adds that another challenge is the
data management,“because there can be so
much of it”.
However it is this data that makes drones
such an attractive option. Wei Yik Lee, co-
founder of Advanced Vision Analytics Asia, says
that “the value of the drone signals a new era
– and that era is data. That data comes from
images and what you can do with that data
is boundless. Predictive maintenance will be
possible in the future with a drone.”
Meyer agrees: “The sensors that can be
connected to a drone will open up so many
doors, you are going to be blown away.” He
says that already companies using drone
inspections are considering using the service
every few months instead of annually because
it is so much quicker than traditional methods.
“That would yield a dynamic volume of
data.”
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2/13/18 10:28 AM

Q&A
The impact of lubrication on TCO
Lubricants can help increase productivity and reduce total cost of ownership for turbines,
transformers and stationary engines, Marcelo Goldberg tells Kelvin Ross
Q: Why do you think that the impact of
lubrication on TCO has so often been
underestimated or even overlooked?
A: Many companies are already well aware
that reducing total cost of ownership (TCO)
over the lifetime of machinery is key to extracting
the best possible value from their equipment.
However, an international study of power
companies commissioned by Shell Lubricants
showed that many companies are
underestimating the potential cost savings and
productivity gains from effective equipment
lubrication. Some 58 per cent of companies
recognize that their choice of lubricant can
help reduce costs by 5 per cent or more, but
fewer than one in ten (8 per cent) realize that
the impact of lubrication could be up to six
times greater.
This could be due to a lack of understanding
www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
1802PEI_27 27
about the potential benefits of lubrication –
including selecting the right product and
ensuring it’s managed properly. Even the best
lubricant or grease cannot perform if it is not
stored, applied and monitored correctly. The
same survey also revealed that 59 per cent of
those surveyed think they don’t conduct staff
training on lubricants as regularly as they
should, and only 43 per cent of companies
have all the correct procedures in place to
manage lubricants effectively.
Q: Are you seeing this changing as customers
explore every possible way to maximize
flexibility and efficiency to respond to market
demands?
At a time when power generation, transmission
and distribution companies are under pressure
to achieve greater productivity and reliability,
Power Engineering International February 2018
Shell Lubricants
they are placing more emphasis on improved
system efficiency, reliable equipment production
and longer oil and equipment life. For power
companies looking to make changes to their
maintenance practices, expert advice from
their lubricants supplier can help.
Q: Has the pace of change you have witnessed
– and responded to – in the power sector in
recent years been the fastest you have
encountered in the sector?
Globally, the demand for power is increasing,
driven by a growing population, mass
urbanization, and rapid industrialization of
nations like China and India. Over the past few
years we have seen increasing demand and
new challenges facing the entire power supply
chain, from engine manufacturers and their
customers, to oil suppliers such as Shell
Lubricants. Environmental targets are getting
stricter, penalties for supply interruptions more
severe, budgets are tighter and operating
conditions are tougher. Equipment technology
is evolving to deliver greater efficiency, higher
output and longer operating life, but this places
greater strain on the lubricants. With industry
demands only set to increase, Shell Lubricants
invests approximately $2 billion in research and
development each year, to ensure our lubricants
are designed to work in the latest equipment
and withstand the higher oil stress.
Q: And is the pace of change in power greater
than other sectors you may serve, like mining,
shipping or industrial manufacturing?
27
2/13/18 10:32 AM
 Shell Lubricants
A: Each sector has its own challenges and we
are seeing a rapid pace of change in many
of the industries in which we operate. For the
power industry, the pressure to keep the lights
on has driven a very fast pace of development
and adoption of new equipment technology
over the last five years.
Q: You’ve launched the Argina oil. At what
areas of the power sector is it targeted? And
what are the benefits that it offers?
A: The Shell Argina range is designed to meet
the needs of marine and power companies
operating four-stroke engines on heavy fuel oil.
Formulated to withstand higher oil stress, field
trials of Shell Argina have shown encouraging
results under the toughest operating conditions.
Customers using new Shell Argina oils have
seen up to 18 per cent less oil consumption
and up to 15 per cent better base number (BN)
retention. This helps to reduce their cost of
lubrication and therefore help lower the total
cost of ownership of their equipment. And this
is only the start: by coupling the new Shell Argina
range with our core lubrication management
services, we can help our customers to build
technical competencies across their
organizations, to implement effective lubrication
management procedures and to extract the
best possible value from their power equipment.
Q: What is the R&D process for a new oil like
Argina – is it carried out in conjunction with
customers? Do customers ask for a specific
28 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_28 28
need, or does Shell develop an innovation and that the application of sensor technology to
take it to the customer? enable real-time monitoring and analysis of
A: Collaboration plays an important role in lubricant and equipment performance will play
helping steer the development of oils and an increasingly important role in lubrication
greases for the latest equipment technology, management.
and strengthens the innovative capabilities of
our Shell Lubricants Research & Development Marcelo Goldberg is Shell Lubricants’ Global
teams. It can take up to three years to develop Sector Manager for Power. www.shell.com/
a new product like Shell Argina S5.The process lubricants
includes close collaboration with engine
manufacturers and the companies using the Visit www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
engines, often our customers. The new Shell for more information
Argina S5, for example, has been endorsed by
Wartsila and approved by leading engine OEMs
after extensive field trials that allowed us to
validate the oil’s performance in real-life
scenarios and demonstrate how it can help
improve engine performance, efficiency and
reliability.
Q: What role is digitalization and big data
playing in lubricants? And how do you
anticipate this to develop?
A: Digitalization is all about the speed to
communicate, speed to monitor and speed to
deliver, which can significantly improve
equipment performance, availability and
reliability.
At Shell Lubricants, we are investing heavily in
digitalization as we believe data is an asset
that, if well utilized and interpreted, can help
predict engine behaviour, and when used
alongside lubrication management services,
it can also help to increase oil life. We expect
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2/13/18 10:32 AM

Electric actuators in
biomass power plants
With the Paris Agreement
B
signed by 174 countries, there is
a growing focus on renewable
energy, including biomass.
Gerda Nölp looks at the
potentials and challenges for
electric actuators in biomass-
fired power plants
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1802PEI_29 29
iomass-fired power plants are becoming
increasingly popular, especially in
Scandinavian countries, but also in other
regions of the world that are striving to reduce
their carbon dioxide emissions.
A wide range of recent projects shows that
the technology to run these plants economically
is available today, making them a viable
alternative to fossil-fueled plants.
Biomass plants can use various kinds of
organic matter as fuel: usually waste or by-
products that are available locally in large
quantities. Combinations of different types of
biomass, natural gas and biomass, or coal and
biomass are also possible.
European biomass power plants frequently
burn straw – a by-product of agriculture – or
wood in various forms such as wood chips,
pellets or other wood waste. In other regions,
other materials such as corn waste, sugar cane
bagasse or oil palm residues are often used.
Power Engineering International February 2018
Valves and actuators
Denmark’s biomass-fired Skærbæk CHP plant
Credit: Ørsted
The basic design and operation of a
biomass plant are almost identical to those of
a coal-fired plant. Converting an existing coal
power station to biomass is possible with
reasonable effort, as numerous examples
demonstrate.
Apart from the fuel itself, the main differences
between biomass and fossil-fuel plants lie in
the way the fuel is transported, the grates and
ash handling systems, and the boiler design.
Because biomass is generally coarser than
pulverized coal, for example, biomass boilers
have to be comparatively tall to allow a longer
time for complete combustion.
Most biomass-fired power plants are
combined heat and power facilities that
produce heat for district heating as well as
electricity.Their total efficiency is typically much
higher than that of plants producing only
electricity.
Valves and valve actuators are key
29
2/13/18 10:32 AM
 Valves and actuators
components in the classic processes of
feedwater treatment, steam generation, turbine
injection, flue gas cleaning, and district heating
networks, just as they are in conventional power
and cogeneration plants. And, as with
conventional plants, high temperatures, high
pressures, and vibration all test the durability of
valves and actuators. However, the complex
and variable nature of biofuels introduces some
challenges, as the following examples show.
Special requirements
The straw-fired Lisbjerg power plant,
commissioned in 2016, is one of the largest of
its kind in Denmark.
With its output of 38 MW of electricity and
78 MW of heat, the plant supplies 20 per cent
of the district heating demand of Aarhus, the
second largest city in Denmark. Aarhus plans
to source all its district heating from CO2-neutral
energy sources by 2030.
Lisbjerg power plant burns up to
240,000 tonnes per year of straw from nearby
farms.To increase its flexibility, the plant can also
burn up to 50 per cent woodchips. Four parallel
conveying lanes and feeders supply straw to
the boiler. Combustion takes place on a water-
cooled vibrating grate.
Approximately 50 of AUMA’s latest-generation
SA and SAR electric actuators automate valves
in the Lisbjerg plant. Equipped with AC intelligent
controls, all the actuators are centrally controlled
via a Profibus DP V1 interface. Notable is the
actuator on the condenser bypass damper,
which has special safety requirements.
To make full use of its residual heat, the flue
gas passes through a condenser. In case this
needs to be taken offline for maintenance, the
plant has a large bypass damper that allows
the flue gas to be routed directly to the chimney.
Failure of the damper to open when required
could lead to a plant shutdown.
The contractor of the plant contacted Kolster,
a Danish damper manufacturer that is part of
engineering company KSM Kragelund. Kolster
has a long history of working with Grønbech &
Sønner, AUMA’s representative in Denmark.
Together, Kolster and Grønbech & Sønner
decided on the most suitable combination of
actuator, control unit and gearbox for this
critical application.
The designers specified that the actuator
must meet the requirements of at least Safety
Integrity Level (SIL) 1, as specified by IEC 61508
edition 2.They chose a Kolster KLS 1500 × 2750
mm damper with an AUMA SA 14.6 actuator,
AC 01.2 SIL actuator controls, and GS 250.3
gearbox.This actuator combination is designed
for applications requiring a high degree of
30 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_30 30
(V2 services as standard) in Skærbæk power plant
safety, and meets SIL 2 requirements.At Lisbjerg
it is used for both normal and safety-critical
functions.
First German straw-fired plant
The BEKW power plant in Emlichheim is the first
in Germany to rely on straw as a fuel. This
cogeneration plant (10.2 MWe/49.8 MWth)
started up in 2013 and burns approximately
70,000 tonnes per year of straw from surrounding
farms. It achieves a record primary energy
efficiency of approximately 90 per cent.
Technical availability is 98 per cent, which is
excellent for this type of plant.
AUMA electric actuators contribute to both
the efficiency and the reliability of the
Emlichheim plant. In use are around 30 SA
actuators for open-close duty and SAR
actuators for modulating duty, all equipped
with AC intelligent actuator controls.
An example application is the control of
water flow to the spray attemperators located
after the superheaters.Variations in the quality
of the straw fuel, and the continuously changing
demand for district heat, make this a
challenging task that the AUMA actuators are
well placed to handle.
Skærbæk power plant near Fredericia,
Denmark, is one of three power plants operated
by energy giant Ørsted (formerly DONG Energy)
that have recently been converted to biomass.
Originally built for natural gas, the plant was
converted to dual-fuel cogeneration in 2017.
Two new highly efficient 140 MW wood chip
boilers were installed during the refurbishment.
Wood chips are the primary fuel, with natural
gas as a backup.
The main purpose of the plant is to provide
district heating for roughly 200,000 people.
SIPOS SEVEN actuators with Profibus interface
However, the new wood chip boilers can also
supply steam to the existing turbine, to the extent
that the plant can be dedicated entirely to
electricity generation. This ensures maximum
flexibility in the summer, and during periods
when wind or solar electricity production drops.
The plant also has a 5500 GJ heat storage
system that covers approximately eight hours
of heat consumption on a winter’s day.
Installing the wood chip boilers required new
pipelines for water and steam to be installed
and linked to the original gas-fired plant.
Approximately 100 SIPOS SEVEN actuators were
added.
The SIPOS SEVEN actuators, which are
engineered and manufactured by AUMA Group
company SIPOS Aktorik, incorporate frequency
converters that allow their operating speeds to
be adjusted during the valve travel. Variable
speed offers significant advantages in a wide
variety of closed-loop and open-loop control
applications, since each change of valve
position can be matched to its optimum
operating speed.
Variable-speed operation also makes SIPOS
SEVEN actuators very versatile, since a single
size of actuator typically covers eight different
torque settings and seven operating speeds.
This reduces the number of actuator variants
required across the plant, and so simplifies
inventory management. Torques and speeds
can be adjusted at any time to optimize the
process or accommodate process changes.
Heavy-duty modulation
The new HOFOR Bio 4 cogeneration unit at
Amagerværket power plant in Copenhagen,
Denmark, is another example of challenging
requirements for valve automation.The plant is
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2/13/18 10:32 AM

An AUMA SA 14.6 actuator with AC 01.2 SIL
actuator controls and GS 250.3 gearbox at
Lisbjerg power plant
currently under construction and is planned
to start up in 2019. The new unit will burn
approximately 1.2 million tonnes per year of
wood chips in a circulating fluidized bed (CFB)
boiler to yield up to 150 MW of electricity and
415 MW of heat.
The project is a milestone in Copenhagen’s
ambitious journey to becoming the world’s first
CO2-neutral capital by 2025. The operator is
HOFOR Energiproduktion A/S, Denmark’s largest
utility company.
The plant includes a turbine bypass to
control the relative amounts of steam used for
electricity generation and district heating. This
requires high-precision electric actuators on
the control valves in the district heating system
to achieve precise temperature control and
keep the plant in operation even when the
turbine trips.These actuators have to meet the
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1802PEI_31 31
highest requirements for accurate positioning,
short response times, and frequent operation.
The HOFOR Bio 4 unit will use SIPOS SEVEN
HiMod variable-speed actuators. The SEVEN
HiMod range meets the requirements of class
D for continuous modulating duty according
to EN 15714–2, and is suitable for up to
3600 starts per hour, while also providing high
positioning accuracy.
SEVEN HiMod actuators with frequency
converters can reduce their operating speed
as they approach the setpoint. By preventing
any danger of overshoot, this ensures maximum
accuracy and eliminates unnecessary
switching cycles.SEVEN HiMod actuators will
also be used for the steam injection valves in
the boiler. These face equally demanding
requirements, since they must control the steam
temperature to an accuracy of just a few
degrees. Poor temperature control can damage
the turbine blades and the superheater.
The plant will be equipped with the latest
version of the Siemens SPPA-T3000 DCS system,
which has the functionality to integrate the
actuators automatically via a redundant
Profibus DP-V2 network.
Stockholm district heating
Recent biomass projects in Sweden include
the new Fortum Värtaverket KVV8 CHP plant in
Stockholm, which started up in February 2016.
This large plant generates 130 MWe and
280 MWth, including 80 MW recovered from a
flue gas condenser. Fuel flexibility was a prime
concern at the design stage: in normal
operation, the plant consumes around
12,000 m3 per day of wood chips and forestry
residues, but it can also burn coal when
biomass is in short supply.
Four parallel conveying lanes and feeders supply
straw to the boiler at Lisbjerg power plant
Power Engineering International February 2018
Valves and actuators
Värtaverket KVV8 is a big boost to Stockholm’s
ambition to make its district heating resource-
neutral and carbon-neutral by 2030. It produces
enough heat to supply 190,000 households,
and has increased the fraction of renewable
fuels used for district heating in Stockholm from
45 per cent to 70 per cent.
Approximately 100 AUMA SA multi-turn and
SQ part-turn actuators with AC intelligent
actuator controls are used to automate a wide
variety of valves within the plant. Profibus DP-V1
is the preferred communications standard to
carry actuator commands, feedback signals,
messages and diagnostic information. A
standardized Electronic Device Description
(EDD) for the AUMA devices facilitated
integration with the Siemens T3000 control
system supplied by Austrian engineering
company Andritz.
An additional 20 SIPOS SEVEN actuators are
installed on important valves in the district
heating system, where their variable motor
speeds help prevent pressure surges in the
pipelines. Combining the two AUMA and SIPOS
product ranges within a single plant has proven
successful in many recent projects, allowing
the ideal actuation solution to be selected for
each individual valve.
To avoid pressure surges, the SIPOS SEVEN
actuators are programmed to close these critical
valves in two steps. During the first part of the
valve travel, the motor runs at high speed for
maximum responsiveness. Then, after the valve
has moved through 30–50 per cent of its travel
(depending on the valve type), the speed is
reduced.The speed profile can also incorporate
higher speeds for emergency operation.
The traditional way to avoid pressure peaks
is to add a bypass line with a second, smaller,
valve and actuator. The SIPOS variable-speed
solution saves space and reduces costs for
both installation and maintenance.
The examples above illustrate the important
role of valves and electric actuators in biomass-
fired power plants, which are supplying an
increasing fraction of Europe’s electricity and
district heat.Alongside other renewable energy
sources such as wind and solar, they will be a
key component of the future energy mix.
Gerda Nölp is Area Sales Manager Europe
at AUMA Riester GmbH & Co KG, in Müllheim,
Germany. She began her career as a
mechanical engineer designing electric
actuators at Siemens AG in Nürnberg,
Germany.
Visit www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
for more information
31
2/13/18 10:32 AM
 Cybersecurity
The cybersecurity laws
you must know
New cybersecurity legislation is
L
ast year, various cyberattacks in the UK
coming soon, and those in the made headlines around the world: Equifax,
energy sector must be up to the NHS WannaCry ransomware attack,
speed, warns David Varney hackers preventing MPs from accessing emails,
and threats from state-sponsored hackers.
Cybersecurity is a topic that is high on the
agenda of businesses in the energy sector.
Growing reliance upon online and smart
technologies is leading to greater risk of
vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure.
From a policy and legislative perspective,
the European Commission published a
cybersecurity package in September 2017
which proposed more scrutiny of software and
other components used to monitor industrial
control systems.
More specifically, the Commission released
a paper titled ‘Cybersecurity in the Energy
Sector’ in February last year which identified
the strategic challenges and specific needs
for cybersecurity in the energy sector.
The energy sector is an area of particular
concern for cybersecurity authorities as the
industry continues to embrace the Internet of
Things with smart metering and other networked
32 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_32 32
technologies which bring about potential
vulnerabilities.
The ‘Cybersecurity in the Energy Sector’
report was published in 2017 by the Energy
Expert Cyber Security Platform (EESCP), an
expert group which provides guidance or
recommendations to the European Commission
in respect of the energy sector. This report
stressed the need for the energy sector to
address the major challenges of cyber threats
and the requirements for cybersecurity to be
appropriately addressed.
The report confirmed that two major pieces
of European legislation implement the baseline
for cybersecurity across member states: the
Directive on security of Network and Information
Systems (NIS Directive) and the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The EESCP Report concluded with four key
strategic priorities, but highlighted that success
hinged on the ability and willingness of different
stakeholders to cooperate and collaborate. Key
recommendations for energy providers related
to implementing a threat and risk management
system, establishing an effective cyber-incident
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2/13/18 10:32 AM

response network, improving resilience to
cyberattacks and ensuring technical and
human capacity and competence to address
cybersecurity issues in the energy sector.
The NIS Directive
The energy sector should also be aware of the
Network and Information Systems (NIS) Directive,
which is due to be implemented into national
law across Europe in May this year.
The UK government is yet to publish its draft
implementing legislation, but has confirmed
that, regardless of Brexit, it will still implement
the NIS Directive into UK law.
To catch the attention of organizations
whose activities fall within the scope of the NIS
Directive, the government consultation paper
proposed fines of up to €20 million euros or
4 per cent of global turnover (whichever is
higher) for breach of the NIS regime, mirroring
the more-widely publicized significant sanctions
of GDPR.
Along with certain other regulated sectors,
the energy industry will need to be aware of
the impact of the NIS Directive, which is due to
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1802PEI_33 33
come into force in the UK by 9 May. The NIS
Directive requires that operators of “essential
services” will need to increase the security of
network and information systems.
As with other legislation (such as the Bribery
Act 2010 and Modern Slavery Act 2015), there
will be an onus on providers to ensure
compliance through their supply chains and
so necessary due diligence must be carried
out to ensure compliance when appointing
subcontractors.
To satisfy obligations relating to security,
businesses must ensure that appropriate and
proportionate technical and organizational
measures are taken in respect of managing
any risks to the network and information systems.
Operators are required to report incidents which
affect the security, provision, confidentiality and
integrity of the service: there are thresholds
which limit the reporting of incidents to only
those which have a “significant impact of the
continuity of essential services”.
When considering what a ‘significant impact’
is, various factors including the number of users
of the affected services, any impact on
economic activities or public safety, the market
share of the affected entity and the geographic
spread of the area that could be affected by
an incident will need to be considered.
The government proposes to delegate
supervisory cybersecurity powers to the
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial
Strategy (BEIS), and possibly Ofgem. Supported
by the National Cyber Security Centre, these
authorities will be responsible for publishing
cybersecurity guidance as it applies to the
energy sector, incident reporting, taking
decisions as to publicizing incidents and taking
enforcement action against cybersecurity
breaches.
The NIS Directive also requires that the UK
establishes a national Cyber Emergency
Response Team, which (in cooperation with
other European national response teams) will
be responsible for monitoring incidents at a
national level, providing warnings, alerts and
announcements, and responding to risks,
threats and incidents. The government has
confirmed that the National Cyber Security
Centre will also take responsibility for providing
this UK cyber response team.
In contrast to GDPR, which will be directly
implemented into UK law, the NIS Directive
provides the UK government with some flexibility
around implementation. With regards to fines
for non-compliance, the government’s
proposals have mirrored the sanctions provided
for under GDPR for failing to ensure effective
security.
Power Engineering International February 2018
Cybersecurity
Further, the Department for Culture, Media
and Sport (DCMS) published a press release
which suggested that any fine issued for breach
of the NIS Directive would be separate from,
and in addition to, any fines issued under GDPR.
This has the potential for operators of essential
services that suffer a serious loss of personal
data through a cybersecurity incident to be
fined twice for the same breach and highlights
the paramount importance of ensuring
appropriate organizational security.
Protecting data
One of the aims of the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR) is to update and improve
cultural attitudes towards data protection. In
respect of the energy sector, progression is
being propelled by technology, which opens
a raft of opportunities (such as smart meters)
aiming to provide consumer benefits by
increasing competition and revealing accurate
records of consumer data.
The increase in the availability of data must
be afforded with adequate protection. This is
likely to mean a significant increase in data
protection standards for most organizations
within the energy sector. The increased focus
on ‘accountability’ under GDPR requires
organizations to not only comply with the
legislation but to demonstrate their compliance.
This will require careful consideration to ensure
that security is not a one-off ‘tick-the-box’
compliance exercise but is an active, ongoing
and managed process.
In line with the NIS Directive, GDPR also puts
obligations on organizations to ensure that
appropriate technical and organizational
measures are put in place with regards to
protecting personal data.As well as preventing
any cybersecurity issues, the aim is also to
promote confidence through transparency
which would be extremely beneficial for utility
providers in the energy sector to build trust.
Implications for the energy sector
As technology used in the energy sector
continues to progress and develop, adherence
to cyber-security law will continue to be a
significant issue. Utilizing technologies such as
smart metering or responsive grid switching
and management systems brings new
efficiencies.
However, as such technologies require
network connectivity, ensuring cybersecurity
will be of paramount importance. The trend
towards decentralized power plants, small-scale
flexible gas power plants and solar panels on
homes could create issues.
(Continued on page 35)
33
2/13/18 10:32 AM
 News Update
ABB unveils ‘sun-to-socket’ solar solution
ABB has expanded its solar inverter portfolio
with the PVS-100/120 inverter.
The company’s PVS-100/120 range of cloud-
connected, three-phase string inverter solutions
for decentralized photovoltaic systems is now
available.
ABB says that “as the solar market shifts towards
new cost-effective platforms offering extreme
high-power string inverters from 1000 VDC up
to 1500 VDC, ABB’s PVS-100/120 platform
maximizes the return on investment and aims
to reduce CAPEX and OPEX costs for installers
and developers”.
Suitable for both large-scale commercial and
industrial ground-mounted and rooftop
applications, the PVS-100/120 offers a six-in-one,
E.ON in gateway deal ahead of smart meter rollout
E.ON has ordered 16,000 smart meter gateways
from the manufacturer PPC, paving the way for
the installation of its smart metering systems in
Germany later this year.
The new technology is expected to be installed
across the entire E.ON network area from
mid-2018.
German legislation provides for the installation
of smart meters for private and business
customers with an annual consumption of more
than 6000 kWh. Similarly, plant operators who
are funded under the Renewable Energies Act
(EEG) and have an installed capacity of more
than 7 kW will have a smart meter installed.
Iberdrola awards maintenance contracts for 4 GW of wind turbines
Iberdrola, through its subsidiary Iberdrola
Renovables Energía, has finished the tendering
process for the maintenance of 4.4 GW of wind
turbines in the Iberian Peninsula.
The framework agreements have a combined
value of $136m and run for between two and
three years, depending on the type of services
which have been allocated.
Negotiations for the tenders took place over
the past six months and the key winners are
34 Power Engineering International February 2018
1802PEI_34 34
‘sun-to-socket solution’, which ABB says is proven
to deliver scalability, flexibility, proactive plant
management and ease of installation.
Marco Trova, ABB Global Product manager –
String Utility, said: “Our new PVS-100/120 string
inverter range offers the ability to interact with
the solar plant system like no other through
high-power consolidation of physical parts and
products along with digitalization.”
Overall, ABB says the new inverter range
optimizes total cost of ownership to include:
50 per cent reduction in installation and logistics
costs; quick and improved user experience with
fast installation; greater capacity without
compromising on versatility; and proactive
control and management.
E.ON said smart metering systems open up
completely new opportunities for customers:
“Today we check our electricity consumption
by reading our meter once a year. Tomorrow,
the Smart Meter Gateway will allow us to use
an app to conveniently check at any time how
much electricity appliances like the refrigerator
or washing machine are using,” said Paul-
Vincent Abs, managing director of E.ON
Metering GmbH and e.kundenservice Netz
GmbH. “This rollout in Germany is the basis for
the digitization of the energy transition.”
E.ON expects to install more than one million
smart metering systems in Germany.
Vestas and Siemens Gamesa, which will carry
out preventive, predictive and corrective
maintenance for 2190 MW and 1265 MW
respectively at wind farms in Spain and Portugal.
Others companies which secured contracts
are Basque firms Ingeteam (233.3 MW) and
Tamoin (421 MW), Galician company IM Future
(218 MW) and Portugal’s Efacec (96.9 MW).
All the facilities are equipped with Siemens
Gamesa G4X, G5X and G6X wind technology.
Jenner Renewables acquires 12
solar projects in Chile
Jenner Renewables, an independent power
producer focused in Latin America, has reached
financial close on a portfolio of 12 solar projects
in Chile totaling 146 MW.
Built in two phases, the portfolio’s first phase
totals 46 MW and is expected to reach
commercial operations later this year, while its
second phase, totaling 100 MW, is expected to
be online early in 2019.
“As an independent power producer operating
throughout Latin America, we are very excited
to contribute in such a significant way to the
development of renewable energy in Chile,”
said Jorge Calvet, Jenner’s founder and chief
executive.
“This country is at the forefront of implementing
a carbon free electricity system by 2040 and
our projects definitely support this strategy.This
is part of our pipeline of 1500 MW, which we
intend to develop over the next three-to-four
years in Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina
and other countries in the region.”
Located throughout the Sistema Interconectado
Central region, the solar projects are supported
by Chilean Small Distributed Generators’
(PMGD) pricing mechanism that provides a
long-term stream of stable cash flow to the
projects.
Projects under the PMGD scheme are
connected to distribution networks and bring
generation closer to consumption, achieving
a key goal for the country’s power system. The
PMGD pricing mechanism also ensures that
while the price received by the generator is
stable, it also reflects the overall cost of electricity
in the system and, as a result, is cost-neutral
over the long term to system participants.
The financing structure for the portfolio enables
Jenner to finance each separate project on a
non-recourse basis under an aggregation
facility as each project reaches ready-to-build
stage.
Jenner Renewables is a portfolio company
managed by Denham Capital, whose MD
Saurabh Anand said:“In addition to Chile and
Brazil, we continue to see significant growth
opportunities in Mexico, Colombia and
Argentina, and look forward to further building
out our firm’s renewable portfolio in Latin
America.”
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2/13/18 10:32 AM

Milestones hit at Race Bank offshore windfarm
Full power output has been achieved at
Ørsted’s Race Bank offshore windfarm, located
off the north Norfolk coast in the UK.
Installation of the wind turbines at Race Bank
first began in May last year and, following
successful completion of the 240-hour
acceptance tests of all 91 turbines and a
200-hour test of the full park, the project is now
capable of generating its full capacity of
573 MW.
During the commissioning process for the final
turbines, Race Bank also passed 1 TWh of
production since construction began, said
Ørsted.
One wind turbine generator was installed in
just over 11 hours, which marked a record for
the company.
(Continued from page 33)
This could be because there are possibly
less sophisticated cyber defences in place.
Others note the digitalization of the electricity
grid and proliferation of renewable energy
which has tempted hackers with new
opportunities.
The sheer volume of data that is available
now through connected devices such as smart
meters installed in houses, and solar panels
which connect to satellites and monitor energy
usage, has made the energy industry appear
more lucrative and prone to cyberattack. The
damage to business reputation will also be a
key reason for energy companies wanting to
protect themselves.
A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey
found that of 500 businesses questioned,
65 per cent of UK businesses were “significantly
concerned” over cyber risks to energy
technology and three out of five would switch
energy supplier if they suffered a cyber breach.
Upcoming challenges
2018 will be an important year for the energy
sector as it seeks to address compliance with
both the NIS Directive and GDPR. The big
challenges will stem from the proliferation of
end user data in the sector, its allure and appeal
www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
1802PEI_35 35
News Update
David Summers, project director for Race Bank
at Ørsted UK, said: “Full power and 1 TWh of
production are two fantastic milestones and
have been achieved by the hard work and
dedication of a significant number of people.
Full power means that Race Bank can now
produce enough green energy to power over
half a million UK homes.
“Not only have we achieved full power on
schedule, but we have also done so safely. I
now look forward to completing final activities
on Race Bank and being able to officially open
the project in the summer.”
Race Bank uses Siemens Gamesa’s 6 MW wind
turbines and many of these feature the first
blades to be manufactured at the Siemens
Gamesa blade factory in Hull.
to attackers and compliance with new
legislation. IT teams will need to continue to be
aware of, and responsive to, cybersecurity risks
and should seek to ensure that any cybersecurity
strategies are compliant with both the NIS
Directive and GDPR.
With regards to opportunities, this is a good
time for organizations to carefully consider their
obligations and transparently present action
plans for cybersecurity and data protection
compliance.
As highlighted above, transparency will lead
to greater trust, investment and rapport with
consumers. This is important as the traditional
position of consumers being wedded to one
Power Engineering International February 2018
Xodus opens first office in Egypt
Xodus Group has appointed its first general
manager in Egypt as the company aims to
build on its track record in the country and
target upcoming new contracts.
Salah Farid Tantawy joins Xodus from PICO
Petroleum Integrated Services, where he was
project general manager for the Amal-C
platform installation in the Gulf of Suez.
Xodus offers engineering and advisory support
to oil and gas, renewables and utility companies.
Since 2013, Xodus says it has won over
$2.8 million in contracts in Egypt.
Much of that work was previously won and
carried out by Xodus’ offices in Aberdeen and
London, however research found that an
established base was required to increase
business in the country.
Cybersecurity
utility provider is shifting, enhanced regulation
of competition making it easier for consumers
to switch providers and receive the best
deals.
Organizations in the energy sector should
now keep watch for the government’s draft NIS
legislation, and ensure that internal processes
and security standards are compliant.
David Varney is Senior Associate in the
corporate team at independent UK law firm
Burges Salmon
Visit www.PowerEngineeringInt.com
for more information
35
2/13/18 10:32 AM
 Diary
March Future of Utilities Smart City Expo
20–21 March 18–20 April
International Nuclear Power Plants Summit London, UK Casablanca, Morocco
6–7 March https://new.marketforce.eu.com/future-of- www.smartcityexpocasablanca.com/en
Istanbul, Turkey utilities/event/utilities-summit
www.nuclearpowerplantsummit.com Next steps for UK energy storage
Smart Cities & Communities 19 April
Developments in Power System Protection 22 March London, UK
12–15 March Manchester, UK www.westminsterforumprojects.co.uk
Belfast, UK https://openforumevents.co.uk
https://events.theiet.org/dpsp/about.cfm 4th Jordan International Energy Summit
3rd International Conference on Renewable 23–24 April
Solar & Wind Tech Asia Energy and Smart Grid Amman, Jordan
13–15 March 22–24 March http://jies-summit.com
Karachi, Pakistan Kitakyushu, Japan
www.solarwindexpo.com www.icresg.org MENA New Energy
24–25 April
3rd International Geothermal Congress April Dubai, UAE
14–15 March http://events.newenergyupdate.com/mena
Ankara, Turkey World Wind Energy Conference
www.igc-turkey.com 5–7 April June
Karachi, Pakistan
Solar Power Summit www.wwindea.org/events/world-wind-energy- Electrify Europe
14–15 March conference-2018 19–21 June
Brussels, Belgium Vienna, Austria
www.solarpowersummit.org www.electrify-europe.com

Ad Index
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 DRONES IN THE POWER
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