Skydio CEO Adam Bry said on X today that Dominion Energy has added 100 docked drones to its fleet. Bry wrote that the utility is moving linemen and substation electricians into remote drone pilot roles, flying to the inspection angles they used to climb for.
The Richmond, Virginia, utility’s Unmanned Systems Group ran 23 drone-in-a-box units in June, as DroneXL reported. The Dominion film Bry posted with today’s news counts two dedicated pilots in its transmission drone program.
Dominion Says Docked Drones Save 8 To 12 Hours Per Event
Dominion says in the film that checking a substation by docked drone before crews roll out saves 8 to 12 hours per event. The utility chose Skydio’s dock partly because it is US-made, and a Dominion voice in the film says the autonomy is what it pays for.
The same film says the program expects to grow from two dedicated pilots to six to eight within two to three years. Bry’s post on X names no dock model, no per-site count and no locations for the 100 units. The aircraft on screen is the Skydio X10, launching from Skydio docks.
Dominion Pitches Drone Pilot Jobs As A Career Path For Linemen
Matt Rogers, manager of electric transmission lines operation at Dominion, says the drone program opens new opportunities for the utility’s linemen and substation electricians, the workers who know the equipment best. He calls the remote pilot role “another path for them to grow their career.”
Dominion isn’t the only utility flying Skydio X10s on the grid. East Texas utility SWEPCO uses them along its power lines to find vegetation before it causes outages.
DroneXL’s Take
I like who Dominion is putting behind the controls. A lineman who has climbed a substation structure knows what a failing insulator looks like, and Dominion is turning that experience into a remote pilot job instead of replacing it. The numbers in Dominion’s own film tell me the bigger change is autonomy, though. Two dedicated pilots, growing to six to eight, will not hand-fly a fleet that just grew by 100, so the Skydio software does most of the flying and the linemen supervise it. If the 8 to 12 hours per event holds up through a storm season, I’d like Dominion to publish the outage numbers that prove it.
Source: Adam Bry on X, with Dominion Energy’s Electric Transmission UAS Program video.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
