Drones are a popular choice with some utilities for specific maintenance and inspection tasks, but those who still haven’t added drones to their lineup will likely want to make sure they do it right the first time. At DISTRIBUTECH International, Christina Park, senior director of energy strategy at Skydio, and Corey Hitchcock, utility solutions specialist at Skydio, will walk through implementing and scaling drones for maintenance, as well as other crucial considerations to consider.
Their session, Path to Condition-Based Maintenance via Drone Solutions, will take place Feb. 27 from 2:45 pm – 3:15 pm. Utilities face a myriad of challenges, from resource constraints and aging infrastructure to external demands such as stakeholder expectations, compliance, and emergency response. In this session, Park Hitchcock will walk through the journey of implementing and scaling a drone and remote ops program into operational workflow, then explore the details of cutting-edge hardware, AI, and autonomy and what those functions and features mean for real use case examples in power generation and delivery.
Park joined Skydio as the Sr. Director of Energy Marketing after 15+ years at the New York Power Authority. Her experience in the utility industry spanned engineering from design to commissioning in power generation before a shift to strategic operations and asset management. As senior director of asset intelligence solutions, she led the comprehensive effort to operationalize technology across the enterprise. By standing up the Reliability Centered Maintenance program and identifying the gaps for technical enablement to bring solutions to scale, her department tested and incorporated robotics, sensors, and data analytics to connect problems to solutions.
Hitchcock joined Skydio as a utility solutions specialist in early 2023. Prior to Skydio, Corey led UAS Program Development and Operations with Southern Co. Aerial Services. Corey developed methods for operating drones across the nuclear, gas, and power verticals, notably flying one of the first UAS inspections on an operating nuclear reactor. At Skydio, he is developing dock-based drone use cases for autonomous inspections as well as focused routine, event-based, and security inspections for substations.
