Luz del Sur Uses Drones to Maintain 40,000 Grid Structures

Luz del Sur uses drones to wash electrical insulators across its medium-voltage network, where a failure can take an entire circuit out of service and affect thousands of customers. The company says the drones improve cleaning efficiency by 40% to 60% in hard-to-reach areas. Its grid, schedule and machines shape the work. When the system fails, customers feel the consequences.

Who Controls the Grid

“This climatic condition that exists in Lima makes it necessary for us to remove the mud that forms on those insulators with some frequency,” said Alfredo Melly, Luz del Sur's deputy corporate relations manager. The insulators sit on electrical poles and prevent contact between the pole and the power cable. In metropolitan Lima, Melly said, urban pollution and a lack of rain cause mud to build up on them.

If dirt remains, it can cause a ground discharge and activate a protection system, Melly said. That system prevents electricity leakage but also takes the entire circuit out of service. Thousands of customers can be affected. The company divides its concession area into zones rated most critical, moderately critical, less critical or inaccessible, then determines where washing takes priority.

Luz del Sur operates 40,000 medium-voltage structures, including poles and aerial substations, and its coverage extends to Cañete and Huarochirí. In the most polluted areas, each structure would need cleaning twice a year, Melly said. The company doesn't clean every pole daily; instead, it assigns maintenance based on its assessment of need.

Workers, Machines and the Cost of Maintenance

Before drones, workers cleaned insulators by taking the area being serviced out of service. Luz del Sur later used a special truck with a hydraulic arm to lift a worker to the top of a pole, where the worker washed the equipment with demineralised water. That method couldn't reach every area, and the truck's running engine produced pollution, Melly said.

The new drone carries a hose connected to a tank and sprays pressurised water. Luz del Sur says the approach is safer and more environmentally friendly. The shift also changes how the utility reaches infrastructure that trucks can't access. After a pilot, the company began implementing the project this year through daily work shifts, prioritising hard-to-reach locations.

Luz del Sur began the project last year and received the Creatividad Empresarial award in the “Process Innovation” category that year. The award recognizes the company's innovation, while workers still have to maintain the equipment and customers can lose service when protection systems shut down a circuit.

More Drones, More Monitoring

Melly said the company is collecting operational data and believes two or three drones could clean the capital's medium-voltage poles. Luz del Sur also uses drones to monitor electrical installations and areas around transmission substations.

“We have deployed 6 drones in the areas where we estimate there could be a problem with the El Niño phenomenon so that every so often they can be activated, rise up and detect early any landslide that could occur when the rains begin,” Melly said. The company is also piloting a flexible robotic drone designed to remove objects stuck to electrical installations. Its aerial monitoring and maintenance tools are expanding; the account describes company operations, not any community-led response.