Luz del Sur Uses Drones to Clean Power Insulators

Luz del Sur is using drones to wash electrical insulators on medium-voltage installations, reporting cleaning efficiency gains of 40% to 60% in hard-to-reach areas. The company began the project last year and received the Creatividad Empresarial award in the “Process Innovation” category that year.

The maintenance work focuses on equipment installed on electrical poles. Insulators keep a pole from contacting its power cable. When dirt builds up, electrical service can suffer. In metropolitan Lima, urban pollution and a lack of rain cause mud to collect on insulators, said Alfredo Melly, Luz del Sur's deputy corporate relations manager.

Why the equipment needs cleaning

If workers don't remove dirt, Melly said, it can cause a ground discharge and activate a protection system. That system prevents electricity leakage, but it also takes the entire electrical circuit out of service, affecting thousands of customers. “This climatic condition that exists in Lima makes it necessary for us to remove the mud that forms on those insulators with some frequency,” he said.

Before adopting drones, workers took the area being serviced out of service to clean the insulators. 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 then washed the equipment with demineralised water. Melly said the truck couldn't reach some areas and its running engine produced pollution.

How the drones operate

The drone carries a hose connected to a tank and sprays pressurised water onto the insulators. Luz del Sur says this approach is safer and more environmentally friendly than the previous method. After a pilot, the company began implementing the project this year through daily work shifts, prioritising locations trucks can't reach.

Melly said Luz del Sur is collecting operational data and believes two or three drones could clean the capital's medium-voltage poles. The company doesn't clean every pole daily. Instead, it divides its concession area according to washing need: most critical, moderately critical, less critical or inaccessible. In the most polluted areas, each structure would need cleaning twice a year, Melly said.

Luz del Sur has 40,000 medium-voltage structures, including poles and aerial substations. Its coverage extends to Cañete and Huarochirí. The company hasn't said every structure will receive the same cleaning schedule; it says it will prioritise according to the need for washing.

Monitoring and other drone uses

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

“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.

Luz del Sur is also piloting a flexible robotic drone designed to remove objects stuck to electrical installations. The company is gathering operational data on its insulator-cleaning project while using drones for monitoring and testing that additional removal capability.