In a recent interview with APPA, Eric Poff, director of substation telecommunications and metering assets at SMUD, details a pilot program under which the California public power utility is utilizing robot dogs to troubleshoot potential issues with its substations.
“I've been looking at aerial drones and robotics for some time and have always had a strong interest in that technology,” Poff noted in an APPA Public Power Now podcast episode.
When he came across a robot produced by the company ANYbotics, he took note of the fact that it had strong recommendations from the Electric Power Research Institute.
A few years ago, EPRI conducted an in-depth study looking at four or five different dog-like robots “and they put them through a series of tests, from everything from ability for payloads to security response to safety,” Poff noted. The ANYbotics product “was at the top of the list and that really helped us kind of narrow our focus down when we launched this pilot.”
The names of the three robot dogs have a Jetsons theme -- Astro, Elroy and Judy.
The pilot started a year ago but the groundwork for the effort needed to be done in advance of the launch. Poff noted that he has been interfacing with ANYbotics for around two years.
The robot dogs can serve to provide “early signature signs” for issues with equipment such as an insulator. If an insulator / transformer bushing “goes bad, then that's where you can get a short circuit, and damage, an arcing event that can damage the transformer.”
Partial discharge testing enables a robot dog to hunt for early signatures so that the utility can prevent damage.
He underscored the point that SMUD “has not purchased anything. Think of this as robot as a service.” Poff calls it a “bumper to bumper warranty” because if anything happens from a software issue to a hardware issue happens, ANYbotics is covering that as a robotic service.
“The worst thing you can do…is to have a stranded asset you've invested in -- doesn't quite do what you want it to do,” he noted. “So that's why we're really teasing out this three-year pilot and studying what the results are before we do any financial investment into a capital outlay into something like this.”
The pilot fits within SMUD’s enterprise strategy around safety, reliability, and cost savings, Poff noted.
“I've got about 100 people on my team, out of the 250 people in my organization, that are out there working in substations, so obviously, we all want those conditions as safe as possible,” he said.
“The reliability piece -- if one of those pieces of the substation transformers gets damaged, then that's going to have an impact to our customers.”
And with respect to cost savings, “every time we have a finding, that's a cost avoidance, right?”
In a controlled manner, SMUD can “lock out, tag out that transformer, go change that bushing out and put that equipment back in service and avoid a several million dollar cost that we would have had to pay if we missed that early warning sign” of a failing insulator.
Artificial Intelligence
In the interview, Poff also addressed the question of whether there has been any exploration or possibility that SMUD could overlap the use of artificial intelligence with robot dogs.
“We are looking at that right now,” he said. “We have a fire hose of data coming in from three robots on a daily basis, let's call it, each robot going to three or four substations a day,” with the data in turn being fed to an engineer.
The question is how best to utilize AI to “call balls and strikes” on “85% of this, 90% of this -- don't worry about it. Here's the 10% of the pictures -- images that the three robots captured that the engineering team may want to take a look at.”
SMUD is working through the question of how to utilize AI to ensure that it could do this on an accurate basis.
Training
Poff also discussed the training process for SMUD staff with respect to utilizing the robot dogs.
He noted that the utility entered into an agreement with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers tied to the pilot program.
Poff emphasized that the robot is a tool to support SMUD's workforce, and that the pilot is also helping employees build new skills as the utility adapts to emerging technologies.
The main responsibility of the IBEW operators is to go to SMUD substations on a monthly basis and a total of three workers have been trained on the operation of the robot dogs.
The workers complete online courses, and then they spend another week or so in the field with a trained technician from ANYbotics “to get all of the hands-on experience and how to operate the robot in different situations and do a little bit of troubleshooting with it as well, so they feel very confident and the user interface is amazing,” he said.
“Once they program the substation, it is 100% autonomous, and it'll go and complete its mission of capturing the infrared and partial discharge signals within the substation.”
SMUD is looking at other potential uses for the robot dogs including for hydro facility penstock inspections, which are confined spaces for humans.
“Why can't we…utilize this technology to do that instead of having the human and build a virtual reality model of the inside of the pipeline and have a much better product and not put a human in that confined space environment?”
