Renewable Energy

How Drones are helping us save the world

July 31, 2021
12:06 pm

Introduction

Climate change is one of the biggest global challenges that will shape the way we do business now and in the coming decades. The Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, facilitated by the World Economic Forum, believes the private sector has a responsibility to actively engage in global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to help lead the global transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy.

— World Economic Forum Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders

The last eighteen months have shown record results for renewable energies. Sources of electricity such as wind and solar have grown at the fastest rate over decades in 2020 and are set to expand in coming years at a faster pace than prior to the pandemic according to a new report by the International Energy Agency. The growth in Europe and the United States will be even brisker than previously forecast, compensating for China’s transitional slowdown after exceptional 2020 growth. Source: https://www.iea.org/news/renewables-are-stronger-than-ever-as-they-power-through-the-pandemic

Globally the renewable energy capacity in 2020 exceeded the Gigawatt expansion of 2019 by almost 50%. IRENA recorded this broke all previous records. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is an intergovernmental organisation mandated to facilitate cooperation, advance knowledge, and promote the adoption and sustainable use of renewable energy. IRENA is an official United Nations observer.

More than 80% of all new electricity capacity added last year was renewable, with solar and wind accounting for 91% of new renewables, according to the agency’s Renewable Capacity Statistics 2021. Total fossil fuel additions fell from 64GW to 60GW over the same period.

“These numbers tell a remarkable story of resilience and hope.”

IRENA Director-General Francesco La Camera

The RE100 is a global corporate leadership initiative committed towards working with the most influential businesses to turn over to 100% renewable electricity by 2050. Developed by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP the RE100’s purpose is to help accelerate this progress towards zero-carbon grids on a global scale. If the current roster of RE100 members were a country, they would be the 21st largest electricity consumer in the world – bigger than South Africa.

Source: https://www.weforum.org/our-impact/re100

The International Energy Agency (IEA) was created in 1974 to ensure the security of oil supplies. While energy security remains a core mission, the IEA today is at the center of the global energy debate, focusing on a wide variety of issues, ranging from electricity security to investments, climate change and air pollution, energy access and efficiency, and much more. In 2020 this agency crowned solar ‘the new king of electricity supply’.

Solar power will be the new leading source of electricity supply and is projected to be set for massive expansion, according to the IEA. Its World Energy Outlook 2020 report predicts renewables will set new records each year after 2022, thanks to the “widely available resources, declining costs and policy support in over 130 countries.” One of these key declining costs.

“For projects with low cost financing that tap high quality resources, solar PV is now the cheapest source of electricity in history,” the IEA says.

This includes being more cost-effective than coal and gas in many countries today, including some of the largest markets like the United States, the European Union, India and China.

Some of the great moments for Renewable energy this last year

In Great Britain in April 2020 they broke their renewable energy record with the nation’s electricity grid reaching the greenest it’s ever been. The zero-carbon power sources including wind, solar and nuclear made up 80% of the energy mix. At the same time, Great Britain’s carbon intensity of electricity dropped to the lowest figure its been in history.

In Southern Australia the town Adelaide now runs on 100% renewable electricity. This includes swimming pools, car parks, depots and community buildings. The city is the first council in South Australia to use 100% renewable electricity across its operations. This move will reduce emissions by more than 11,000 tonnes a year. That is the equivalent of taking 3,500 cars off the road.

In Vietnam, government-backed incentives have increases solar capacity by a 25-fold increase in just one year. By the end of the year 9.3GW of solar capacity will be added to the grid which is the equivalent to six coal power plants. This will allow Vietnam who had previously been heavily dependent on coal for electricity generation to change their path towards greener pastures.

The increase in renewable energies 2020 is set to become the “new normal”, with about 270 GW of renewable capacity on course to be added in 2021 and almost 280 GW in 2022. Governments around the world have auctioned record levels of renewable capacity and companies have signed record-level power purchase agreements, even as the pandemic spread macroeconomic uncertainties and suppressed demand. Shifting power generation to renewable sources is a key pillar of global efforts to reach carbon neutrality, but CO2 emissions are set to rise this year because of a parallel rise in coal use, underscoring the major policy changes and investments in clean energy needed to meet climate goals. Source: https://www.iea.org/news/renewables-are-stronger-than-ever-as-they-power-through-the-pandemic

“Wind and solar power are giving us more reasons to be optimistic about our climate goals as they break record after record. Last year, the increase in renewable capacity accounted for 90% of the entire global power sector’s expansion. Governments need to build on this promising momentum through policies that encourage greater investment in solar and wind, in the additional grid infrastructure they will require, and in other key renewable technologies such as hydropower, bioenergy and geothermal. A massive expansion of clean electricity is essential to giving the world a chance of achieving its net zero goals.’’

Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the IEA.

Source: https://www.iea.org/news/renewables-are-stronger-than-ever-as-they-power-through-the-pandemic

Renewable electricity generation in 2021 is set to expand by more than 8% to reach 8 300 TWh, the fastest year-on-year growth since the 1970s. Solar PV and wind are set to contribute two-thirds of renewables growth. China alone should account for almost half of the global increase in renewable electricity in 2021, followed by the United States, the European Union and India. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2021/renewables

In Spain electricity from new solar farms this last year has generated over 15,000 gigawatt hours of power, according to data from the country’s grid manager Red Electrica. While the sunny Southern European country still has about a third of the installed solar capacity as the EU’s leader Germany, Spain’s sector is set to grow at about double the Germans’ pace in the next two years, according to BloombergNEF.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-06/the-10-ways-renewable-energy-s-boom-year-will-shape-2021

Drones are emerging as an essential tool, that makes for easier and more inexpensive ways to gather vital climate data. It gives renewable energy companies a powerful tool for their productivity and helping researchers prepare for the complex implications of climate change.

Drones and Inspections

Inspections and upkeep of all these new wind turbines and solar panels are the keys to long term sustainable change. Drone automated flying allows for more accurate readings making sure that this equipment is kept in top shape. For example a 150 metre tall wind turbine can take days to be manually inspected which is needed at least once a year for maintenance. Each day the turbine is not in operation it loses thousands of rands. Drone operations can cut this time down to mere hours.

Inspections can take various shapes with one key benefit being that you can cover large areas quickly. There are regular and accurate interval inspections of construction projects. Inspections on building projects which greatly improve safety in difficult to access areas. Structure inspections for towers, bridges, solar panels, roofs and more can be handled with more accuracy.

Improved safety in wind turbine inspections resulting in no longer needing to use a Rope Access Crew. In agriculture field inspections monitor crop health while drones can also handle Fire damage inspections, hail damage as well as timber theft inspections.

Drones and Forestry

One of the ways drones are helping is researchers have created drones that can attach sensors to trees to monitor environmental and ecological changes in forests. These sensors are used for forest monitoring are already used to track changes in temperature, humidity and light, as well as the movements of animals and insects through their habitat. They also help to detect and monitor forest fires and can provide valuable data on how climate change and other human activities are impacting the natural world. By using drones with these sensors, they can overcome the difficulties. They can now shoot sensor-containing darts onto trees several metres away in cluttered environments like forests. The drones can also place sensors through contact or by by perching on the tree branches.

These researchers aim for drones be used in future to create networks of sensors to boost data on forest ecosystems, and to track hard-to-navigate biomes like the Amazon rainforest.

"Monitoring forest ecosystems can be difficult, but our drones could deploy whole networks of sensors to boost the amount and precision of environmental and ecological data. I like to think of them as artificial forest inhabitants who will soon watch over the ecosystem and provide the data we need to protect the environment."

Lead researcher Professor Mirko Kovac, director of the Aerial Robotics Lab from the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial

Dr. Paul Salaman, CEO of Rainforest Trust, a charity that saves rainforests, recently told the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation how drones can also help with land-use planning.

“Drones help produce detailed maps of protected areas and can aid in identifying the best locations for trails or park infrastructure, limiting the footprint of park development. They can also help identify new areas important for protection, and monitor and track species in and around protected areas to help identify migrant routes, nesting locations and other vital habitats.”

Dr Paul Salaman

Source: https://www.verizon.com/about/our-company/fourth-industrial-revolution/how-drones-help-environment-and-tackle-climate-change

Drones and Nuclear

When performing infrastructure inspections on nuclear plants, one of the threats is radiation exposure that can put workers in harm’s way. By using drones as their eyes, engineers can now perform visual inspections from a safe distance. Some nuclear power plants have turned to custom drone payload solutions to enable inspection missions that would otherwise be dangerous and costly to take.

For active plants, single flights can provide power companies with savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars, as costly shut-downs can be avoided while inspections are taking place. The same concept works for nuclear clean-ups. In late 2020, Flyability’s Elios 2 was sent in to get a closer look at Chernobyl’s Reactor Five. It was the first time since the 1986 catastrophe that experts were able to get a visual and determine the level of radioactivity there. Source: https://enterprise-insights.dji.com/blog/drones-sustainable-future-earth

Drones and Poaching

By being able to cover large areas of landmass drones are helping to fight back against poaching. One limitation though is they need to be airborne for a long period of time.

It is early days with drone batteries becoming more affordable with time but as the battery endurance increases there will be the potential to track and evaluate the impact of environmental degradation from climate change and natural disasters far more easily. It will also assist when dealing with poaching in difficult to reach and hostile environments. Drones can collect this vital data from these remote regions and once the restrictions of battery life are overcome it will become an incredibly valuable resource to authorities.

“Climate change is undoubtedly the biggest issue facing us all and as we get to grips with tackling this issue, I fundamentally believe the development and deployment of technology – including UAVs – has a critical role in our global response. In the fight against poaching, UAVs can be an incredibly valuable resource to authorities. For example, at over 7,000 square miles the Kruger National Park in Africa is almost the same size as Wales and poaching can happen anywhere and at any time of the day or night. To effectively patrol this area, anti-poaching agencies need UAVs with long flight times and they need them to be cheap enough that they can have many of them flying simultaneously.”

Dr Kirk, the director of the Turner-Kirk Charitable Trust

He added he would like UAVs to be an essential tool at the fingertips of of those environment agencies already helping in the fight against climate change.

“They will help them gather data much more quickly and fundamentally I believe technology enables world-leading experts to do their jobs even better. In the area of conservation, continuous monitoring of endangered animals by UAVs will enable authorities to identify potential threats and increase the response times for wardens to intercept and prevent any illegal activity. Using UAVs to effectively monitor vegetation and land over large areas will help scientists and researchers to create large data sets helping them understand how climate change is affecting some of the world’s most critical”

Dr Kirk, the director of the Turner-Kirk Charitable Trust

Source. https://www.irishnews.com/magazine/science/2020/02/24/news/drones-have-critical-role-to-play-in-tackling-climate-change-1850050/

Drones and Wild Fires

Adam Watts is a fire ecologist and professor at the Desert Research Institute in Nevada and he believes that using drones to document fires will eventually lead to an indispensable resource that will help with wildfires to prolonged droughts and overall how climate change is impacting the ecology of the American West.

"We want some really big fires that are kind of like simulated wildfires," Watts explains. They create ‘prescribed’ fires that allow them to study how fires work. "We don’t want a little tiny prescribed burn, because if we study those prescribed burns, we don’t get the kind of fire behavior and smoke movement that we see in wildfires. And that’s what we’re after the understanding of."

Adam Watts

The eventual goal for Watt’s is to get data from large wildfires and by using drones he is able to get insights from locations he couldn’t get to before. This new perspectives can give scientists new insights as Watts is now looking into whether microbes from soil can be transferred from one region to another by wildfire smoke. But to measure that, he needs to put scientific equipment right into the smoke which is now possible due to drones unmanned nature.

Source: https://www.kunc.org/2019-09-03/using-drones-to-fight-climate-change

Drones and Wildlife Research

One example of how the drone is helping in the scientific world of wildlife research is the example of the colony of fur seals on Phillip Island, just off Australia’s southern coast,. This island has been long standing challenging experience for biologists. They use to tally the seals by having several researchers rowing out and visually counting the seals. By now using drones above the herd, the researchers can capture images of the colony.

Dr. Rohan Clarke, senior lecturer at Monash University, who leads a team that tracks the seal rock population as well as Australian sea birds explains that an animal survey that used to take one to two days can now be completed in an hour.

"The footage gives us a much better insight into population change over time when compared with more traditional and much more labor intensive ground counts.”

Doctor Rohan Clarke

Source:

https://www.verizon.com/about/our-company/fourth-industrial-revolution/how-drones-help-environment-and-tackle-climate-change

Conclusion

There is a growing renaissance emerging in renewable energy. As the scale and underpinnings of how we produce energy shift and change over these next few years the growing essential nature of drones will follow suit. As our dependence on these energy sources grows the inspections, and maintenance technologies and automations will also continue to evolve and adapt.

We at Forestry Drones are committed to doing our part to saving the world. We provide detailed reporting that is captured faster with more efficiency and accuracy that humans can provide. Our missions are also repeatable due to automated flying which can show changes and progress over time on your assets. We use internationally acclaimed software combined with our industry standard payloads and excellent pilots to provide you with reports that have been generated by experts in the field. These reports are accurate and detailed and can showcase new perspectives that inspections from the ground simply could not provide.