Drone Solves Albemarle EMC Outage Mystery
The culprit went unseen by ground crews
When Albemarle EMC’s South Mills area started experiencing intermittent outages in August, a drone flight made quick detective work of what may have been a trickier mystery for lineworkers to solve from the ground.
The culprit? An unlucky frog.
“The frog [had made contact] on the top of an insulator on a pole in a field, making it difficult for us to find the source of the blinking lights,” said Albemarle EMC General Manager Gary Ray. “But one of our linemen was able to use our drone to take this picture and find the problem.”
Albemarle EMC purchased its DJI Inspire drone in August 2018. Roughly one-third of all NC electric co-ops are currently utilizing drones for system inspections.
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