Since launching our drone inspection program in July 2024, City of Loveland Utilities has taken to the skies with one clear mission: to deliver safer, faster and more reliable service. In less than a year, we’ve seen outstanding results.
These photos show examples of proactive maintenance that helps prevent outages before they happen. From left to right: evidence of electrical arcing, infrared images of an overheating fuse and damaged lightning arresters.
By the end of May 2025, we inspected 1,102 utility poles—nearly 28% of all poles in the city. Thanks to drone technology, we’re now able to inspect poles at a rate of 29 per hour, a significant improvement over traditional ground-based methods. Drones provide a clear top-down view of pole components and enable thermal inspections—capabilities that would otherwise require bucket trucks or workers to climb the poles. For poles in tight rear easements without alley access, drones are often the only way in.
These inspections aren’t just efficient — they’re preventative. About 60% of the issues we’ve found had the potential to cause power outages. By identifying and repairing these problems early, we estimate we’ve prevented more than 504,000 minutes of outages for our customers…