With drones making powerline inspections safer, more efficient, and cost-effective, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a new Part 107 Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) waiver that would allow Valmont Industries to fly its drones across the United States at a moment’s notice.

Valmont’s utility arm, Valmont Utilities, is leading manufacturer of custom-engineered transmission and distribution (T&D) poles. Since 2018, the company has been exploring the use of drone technology as an alternative to the manual inspection process that is as demanding and tedious as it is expensive and risky. Today, a bulk of inspection work at Valmont is done using highly-capable drones such as the DJI Matrice 300 RTK.

The new nationwide BVLOS waiver gives Valmont the ability to fly its diverse drone fleet for commercial inspections of utility lines without waiting for site-specific geographic approval from the FAA.

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Source: dronedj.com