The chimneys are over 180 meters tall and made out of bricks. To conduct a chimney inspection at the plant, professional industrial climbers trained just for this job to climb them in their entirety. Climbers use special extra-long ladders to scale the outer surface of the chimney, performing a visual chimney inspection as they climb and then use a rope to return to the ground once they’ve reached the top.

To inspect the boilers which are 45 meters in height scaffolding must be built inside them that will allow inspectors to visually review the entirety of the inside of the boiler walls. Building this scaffolding requires eight people to work for an entire day moving 8 000 kilos of metal parts into the boiler and setting them in place.

These inspection methods are costly because they require so much labour, materials, and downtime - every minute a chimney or boiler down represents a loss of potential revenue from power production. 

Benefits of inspection by using UAV Elios 2:

SAFETY

Using a drone to collect visual data replaces the need for inspection personnel to climb 180 meters up a chimney to conduct a chimney inspection or three stories high on scaffolding to conduct a boiler inspection.

COST REDUCTION

Savings of up to $ 50 000 by doing chimney and boiler inspections with a drone instead of using professional industrial climbers (for the chimneys) and needing to build the scaffolding (for the boilers).

EFFICIENCY

The Elios 2 collected visual data on both the chimney and the boiler much more quickly than manual methods and it did not require any additional equipment or preparation, such as extra-long ladders or scaffolding.