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Western Power is trialling a new way of inspecting our network using Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) - commonly known as drones. This trial will assist with visual inspections of faults in regional areas.

We expect to launch for the first time in early July and aim to complete 60 inspection flights in the Mid-West and Wheatbelt regions during the trial period. Exactly when and where they are used will be dictated by where faults and outages occur.

Our drone will be based at our Geraldton and Northam depots to help our teams quickly respond to outages in those regions. Our assets in these areas are at greater risk of damage from severe weather. The length of the pole-and-line network means visual inspections can take a long time.

There are a lot of potential benefits from using drone technology to identify faults on our network including reducing the duration of outages by speeding up the identification of faults.

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