Research Status & Deliverables

Project Approach

An approach may be to research and evaluate a commercially available mobile autonomous robotic platform that are capable of performing 24/7 inspection in an outdoor and unmanned substation environment and is currently available on the market. The commercial platform should have a self-charging battery technology and an autonomous navigation. This platform would be evaluated in the EPRI 138 kV yard laboratory in Lenox MA. Once a suitable platform is obtained the second step would be to equip the robotic platform with sensors defined by the EPRI research team. The scope of the project is to develop a sensor package relevant for substation asset inspection and to integrate these sensors into the commercial platform. A demonstration unit would be built and tested out in the 138 kV substation yard in EPRI Lenox laboratory.

Deliverables

The project deliverables will be as follows:

  • Guidelines of substation robotic platform
  • Specification of sensor and monitoring packages based on application
  • Demonstration and proof of concept of a prototype substation robot at 138 kV yard

Planned 2023 Tasks and Updates

In the year 2023, the R&D project is working on second phase of this project i.e., Sensor Integration. R&D team will be working on researching various sensor payloads that are available in the market for the substation asset inspection and integrate the sensors into the Spot robot. Finally, this project will be ended by end of this year with a demonstation at 138 kV substation yard at Lenox and a final report.