Development of the Heliborne Separation Measuring System and its practical application

Abstract

Kyushu Electric Power Co. Inc. or KEPCO has approximately 8000 km of power transmission lines and about 60% of these run over forested areas. Trees growing below the lines bring a risk of outage accidents even when they do not come into direct contact with such lines. In order to prevent these outage accidents, the Heliborne Separation Measuring System was developed jointly with the NEC Corporation. This system determines a 3D coordinate using a laser measuring unit mounted under a helicopter and calculates the separation between lines and trees. This advanced system has contributed to low cost and highly accurate performance in measuring.