Here’s how thermal camera armed drones and AI protect the power grid

The article discusses how Buzz Solutions, led by co-founder and CTO Vikhyat Chaudhry, is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), drones, and thermal imaging to revolutionize the inspection and maintenance of power grid infrastructure. Traditional thermal inspections, which relied on handheld cameras and manual fieldwork, have become inefficient and costly due to the expanding scale of electrical networks. Drones equipped with thermal and visual sensors now collect vast amounts of data more efficiently, but utilities faced challenges managing and interpreting millions of images annually. To address this, Buzz Solutions integrates AI to analyze the data, enabling earlier fault detection, improved operational efficiency, and reduced risks such as wildfires. A key technological advancement highlighted is the fusion of conventional RGB imagery with radiometric thermal data. While thermal cameras alone indicate heat signatures without identifying specific components, combining thermal data with computer vision allows precise identification of equipment like transformers and insulators. This fusion enhances accuracy by isolating thermal readings to relevant components, preventing false alarms caused by unrelated heat sources.