Accenture’s Miki Deric, in “PUF Year-End Survey of Utility Operations and Digitization,” page 37, February’s Public Utilities Fortnightly:
“If I go back to when utilities started automating reclosers, they used to send crews to make sure they operated. Control room operators didn’t trust information that came back from the field that wasn’t physically verified. They didn’t believe that you should operate these remotely because something could go wrong.
Now, the industry is looking at opportunities to replace some of the traditionally manual processes with technology. For example, for some field inspections, utilities are using drones with visual analytics. This improves cost effectiveness of these activities, as well as safety, because we’re not sending somebody to walk the lines.”