Many of the most serious failure precursors on overhead lines are invisible from the ground. A worn splice or a high-resistance connection can look fine and still be heating up under load. By the time there's a visible symptom, it's often an outage, a burn-down, or a fire.

Guidant Power's aerial inspection program combines close visual drone inspection with thermal scanning of transmission and distribution lines, so one program catches both the physical defects and the energized ones.

Close Visual Inspection

High-resolution drone imagery finds the physical defects:

• Broken, cracked, or contaminated insulators
• Conductor corrosion, broken strands, and fretting near clamps
• Loose cotter pins, damaged clamps, and missing hardware
• Pole and tower structural damage
• Vegetation encroachment and sag or clearance problems
• Post-storm damage to structures and conductors

Thermal and Corona Inspection

Infrared scanning finds the energized defects that show up as heat before they show up as damage:

• Hot splices, dead-ends, and jumpers
• Abnormal temperature differences between phases
• Heat at insulators from leakage or stress
• Corona and arcing activity on higher-voltage circuits

How It Works

1. Send your line files (CAD, DXF, Shapefile, or similar) and Guidant builds the flight plan.
2. Crews fly predefined paths for full 360-degree coverage of each asset.
3. Critical defects are reported to your operations team the same day they're found.
4. Your team reviews all imagery and findings in ADEPT, Guidant's inspection platform, which pairs machine learning with review by journeyman inspectors.
5. A final report prioritizes major and minor findings for maintenance planning and budgeting.

The program is built around FAA Part 107 operations and supports utilities working toward NERC vegetation management, wildfire mitigation, and storm resilience goals.

Planning 2027 inspection work or need fast post-storm assessment? Contact Ryan Campbell at rcampbell@powertech-upsc.com or (860) 678-8772 and we'll connect you with Guidant Power to scope a program for your system. Click here to learn more about Guidant's aerial inspections.