HURRICANE, W.Va. — Members of Appalachian Power’s Storm Response Team recently gathered for a twice yearly exercise to prepare for potential storm related outages in the coming months. This week’s training event held at Hurricane’s Valley Park Conference Center was a mock wind storm and how to coordinate response and brought together key personnel across all of Appalachian Power’s areas of service in West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee.
“It sets the stage for us on what we’re going to improve this year and how we’re going to get more efficient to keep costs down for our customers. Practice make perfect,” said Jason Baker VP of Distribution and Operations for Appalachian Power
One of those efficiencies is the use of drones to locate downed lines in remote areas. Baker said by flying a right of way they can cover miles of territory in minutes which in the past took hours for individuals to walk and visually inspect lines to locate the source of an outage. APCo deploys the Skydio X10 to quickly assess outages and deliver real-time visual intelligence to field crews and dispatchers. By providing an aerial view of damage and access issues, the X10 helps prioritize repairs and accelerate restoration times for customers…