’Magic balls’ installed by drones may soon be revolutionizing the US power grid: 'Unrivaled quality at scale'

Comments

• ChicoSuave@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The article is just content generated by a power company intern. The tech is neat and probably worth looking into but it’s a marketing fluff piece desperately using “drone” as SEO bait. Also worth noting is how often “almost” and “may” are used.

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• Delta_V@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The spheres measure line temperature, current, and other key metrics. . . . “We now know exactly how much spare capacity that is available in the line, and how much power we could potentially send through the network,” Bjørnvold said in the press release.

  Kinda surprised that capability wasn’t built into the grid by default.

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  • ugjka@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Most likely brand new lines have that functionality but 90% of grid is very old

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• palitu@aussie.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I have seen these balls on power lines in Western Australia for decades, and literally only just found out what they were.

  They are used (maybe among other things) to understand exactly where a fault has occurred in a mlln outage.

  They give you sensor data between substations, and allow the grid operator to better isolate the fault and restore power to the largest possible area, without reenergising the fault.

  They use parasitic power transfer to be totally disconnected from any dedicated power supply.

  Very cool

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• Jimbabwe@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Neat!

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