Reaching new heights: Sudbury company uses drones to inspect the power grid.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: NEWS

Costello Associates provides engineering services to the power-generation industry; by hobby, president Stephen Costello is a trained, private pilot. With the launch of AirVU, the two areas are coming together to provide the industry with a new tool for maintenance and inspection.

Costello is one of the principals behind AirVU, a Sudbury-based company offering inspection services for electricity assets through unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology.

Following a long career working for municipal utilities companies around the province, Costello branched out eight years ago, forming his own company, Costello Utility Consultants, serving as "an extra pair of hands" for various utilities around Ontario.

After four years of operating out of his basement, Costello hired his first employee and set up shop in a former Catholic elementary school in Sudbury's West End.

Costello Associates now has 15 employees, offices in Sudbury and London, and is planning a farther expansion to Ottawa this spring.

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"We work almost exclusively in utilities, but we are branching out and doing other engineering associated with high-voltage power: generation, renewables, solar, wind, and larger power users," Costello said. "We have a really specialized niche market."

As a trained, private pilot, Costello had watched the evolution of UAV technology for years and viewed the marriage between engineering and UAVs as a natural fit.

Traditional surveying, mapping, and field data collection was done with on-the-ground equipment, but inspecting in-air assets--poles, wires, insulators --proved more challenging because "you're trying to reference a point that you can't touch," Costello said.

UAVs, however, allow operators to inspect those assets from a new, higher perspective, while still staying far enough away to maintain safety.

Costello recognized that as technology advanced and UAV use became more commonplace, his firm needed to take leap of faith. So he set up an affiliate company, AirVU, and purchased a Skyranger UAV manufactured by Waterloo-based Aeryon Labs Inc.

"We really felt that if we were going to be in this market, we needed to go now, because if we waited six months or a year, somebody was going to be there ahead of us."

The Skyranger captures data with an attached digital camera that boasts 30X zooming capabilities --the first of its type in the world. Data captured is transmitted back to 3D modelling software, which can analyze the data...