Luz del Sur Drones Shift Electrical Maintenance Work

Luz del Sur says drones have increased cleaning efficiency by 40% to 60% in hard-to-reach parts of its medium-voltage network. Dirty insulators in those areas can trigger outages that affect thousands of customers. The company is applying the technology across a concession area containing 40,000 medium-voltage structures, including poles and aerial substations.

Who Maintains the Network

Insulators sit on electrical poles and keep the pole from contacting the power cable. In metropolitan Lima, urban pollution and a lack of rain leave mud on the equipment, said Alfredo Melly, Luz del Sur's deputy corporate relations manager. If dirt stays on an insulator, Melly said, it can cause a ground discharge and activate a protection system. That system prevents electricity leakage, but it also shuts down the entire electrical circuit.

“This climatic condition that exists in Lima makes it necessary for us to remove the mud that forms on those insulators with some frequency,” Melly said. The maintenance task links pollution and local weather to how the electrical network operates and the service customers receive.

Before the drone project, workers cleaned insulators by taking the area under repair out of service. Luz del Sur later turned to a special truck with a hydraulic arm, which lifted a worker to the top of a pole. The worker washed the equipment with demineralised water. Melly said the truck couldn't reach some areas, and its running engine produced pollution.

A New Maintenance Method

The drone carries a hose connected to a tank and sprays pressurised water onto insulators. Luz del Sur says the method is safer and more environmentally friendly. The company started the project last year and received the Creatividad Empresarial award in the “Process Innovation” category that year.

After a pilot, Luz del Sur began implementing the project this year in daily work shifts, prioritising places trucks can't reach. The company is collecting operational data. Melly said it believes two or three drones could clean the capital's medium-voltage poles.

The company doesn't wash every pole each day. It divides its concession area according to cleaning needs, classifying locations as most critical, moderately critical, less critical or inaccessible. In the most polluted areas, Melly said, each structure would need cleaning twice a year. Coverage extends to Cañete and Huarochirí.

Monitoring Hazards and Limits

Luz del Sur also uses drones to monitor electrical installations and areas around transmission substations. Melly said the company deployed six drones in areas where it estimates there could be a problem with the El Niño phenomenon. The company can activate the drones periodically to detect landslides when rains begin.

Luz del Sur is also piloting a flexible robotic drone designed to remove objects stuck to electrical installations. The account describes changes to maintenance equipment and methods, but provides no figures on jobs, staffing, costs or savings. It reports no union response or government action, and describes no public reform proposal. The reported efficiency gain applies only to cleaning hard-to-reach areas; the company is still collecting operational data.