Using ROVs at Water and Energy facilities

Waterworks play an important role in society as they maintain and distribute drinking water to the public. Making sure there are no cracks in the dam foundations, unwanted items dumped in the water or damage to the pipelines are just three areas of maintenance to follow up on a regular basis.

With underwater drones, employees working at waterworks or hydropower plants are able to perform their own assessments for documentation and maintenance purposes, without touching the water.

Drinking source inspection with underwater drones

In Norway, 90 % of the drinking water comes from lakes and rivers (source: norskvann.no). Even though the water sources in Norway is of great quality, it's important to protect and manage them in a good way.

Inspection of dam structures Photo: Blueye Robotics

An underwater drone from Blueye enables waterworks employees to do their own underwater inspections. Being able to assess the condition of dam structures and pipelines, and uncover unwanted items possibly polluting, is both incredibly efficient and cost-saving.

Assessing dam structures at hydropower plants

Energy extracted from hydropower represents 1/6 of the global power generation (source: statkraft.no). In addition to the fact that hydropower provides the world a large part of the total supply of electricity, hydropower is also climate friendly, flexible and renewable.

Drone operators at a hydropower plant Photo: Blueye Robotics

Frequent inspections help planning future maintenance. With a recording function and an HD camera, it's easy to document current state and sharing the report afterwards with other stakeholders. If you want to include more people on your dive, you can also add multiple spectators with the Blueye Observer App or connect to a larger external monitor.

Dam structure inspection with the Blueye Pioneer Photo: Blueye Robotics

The underwater drone can handle rough weather

Especially in the Northern parts of the word, we are exposed to harsh and cold weather. The underwater drone handles low degrees well and is designed for Norwegian conditions. With four powerful thrusters, the drone can be operated in water with current up to 1 m/s.

Read all the technical specifications of the underwater drone.

The Blueye Pioneer underwater drone Photo: Blueye Robotics

The benefits of utilizing underwater drones at waterworks and hydropower plants

  • Portable and easy to transport to other locations
  • The small size enables diving into pipes and other areas where divers can't reach
  • HD camera and video recording
  • Possibility to share the inspection live on multiple devices using the Blueye Observer app.
  • Barely no maintenance
  • Auto-depth and auto-heading functions for stabile inspections

We use the underwater drone to assess the state of the soldering on pipelines. We're also able to drive the drone inside the pipe to inspect fouling and errors. - Drone Operator, Trondheim Bydrift

Screengrab from a Blueye Pioneer underwater drone inspecting a pipe

The Blueye Pioneer ROV is of small size, but at the same time quite powerful and robust. The drone weighs 9kg and can easily be transported around to different locations. The small size is also especially convenient for inspecting the inside of pipes and other tight spaces where humans can't reach.

The underwater drone performing inspections inside an UV water management facility Screengrab from a Blueye Pioneer underwater drone

Do you want to learn more about the use cases for the underwater drone within waterworks? See how Trondheim Bydrift utilizes the drone to inspect the drinking source in Trondheim, Norway.

Read about other use cases for underwater drones.

Do you want more information? Contact us today!

Documents

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Blueye Pioneer Tech Spec Sheet

Product sheet with technical specifications
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application/pdf
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Blueye Pro Tech Spec Sheet

Product sheet with technical specifications
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application/pdf
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0.13 MB
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