Abstract

Mantas Vaskela
CEO of Laserpas

Presentation title:
Commercial use of drones for data driven infrastructure maintenance – lessons from the power line sector

Summary
Laserpas is a new type of company – a commercial drone operator, working only with infrastructure operators. Laserpas utilizes petrol powered long range unmanned vehicles to compete with typically on-ground or helicopter based services, allowing acquisition of larger than before amounts of data at an unprecedented frequency.

This allows energy network operators to shift from expert based decisions, when regional manager drafted investment and maintenance plans for power infrastructure, to data driven decision making, when areas are scanned, analysed, and weak-link analysis defines maintenance plans for the next 5 year period.

Laserpas, by using new technology, has already reduced inspection costs by 20-50% in the regions where we work – Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania and Bulgaria. We are actively expanding into new markets and are now actively pursuing opportunities in other Central European countries, Ireland, Turkey and Brazil.

We have reduced risk of trees and vegetation by 80-90% via using photogrammetric and lidar inspection and mathematical vegetation simulation. We have further decreased cost of timber cutting by 20% by giving precise work orders. Laserpas believes that this experience could benefit rail operators greatly. Using these new, low cost technologies allows unprecedented control of the environmental factors, and could make delays after storms a forgotten story.

Bio
Mantas Vaskela, CEO and Co-founder of Laserpas, is a Manchester University alumni, who has spent almost a decade in various positions in power sector. He has started Laserpas in 2015, and gained great traction, being short listed as most interesting startup in Asian Utility Week, European Utility Week, and winning national Climate Launchpad competition in 2015.

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