Lockhart man helping reduce outages following natural disasters
By Kyle Mooty
LPR Editor
Making matters a bit calmer after a storm is a goal of power companies after natural disasters, and an innovative Lockhart businessman has come up with the technology to ease such pain.
Andrew Davis and his AirDAT (Airborne Damage Assessment Tool) – Entergy’s terminology – or Firefly – Davis’ wording for his software – has been implemented following some recent hurricanes in Louisiana and Texas to more quickly assess damaged power structures.
Davis’ design has not been used, yet, by other power companies such as the ones covering Florida and North Carolina for hurricanes Helene or Milton.
The AirDAT software is placed on an airplane equipped with LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensors, and using artificial intelligence, it creates a three-dimensional map of a landscape by scanning the storm-damaged land from the sky. AirDAT can also be used on helicopters scanning the target area.
“LiDAR is essentially the same as Radar that everyone knows about except it’s higher resolution,” Davis said. “LiDAR allows you to get dimensions. It’s a laser that shoot and you get the reflection, so you end up with all this pretty data.”
Aircraft with AirDAT can identify downed or leaning power poles or other impacts to power distribution systems in real-time. This saves possibly days, even weeks of man hours searching for the damaged objects, therefore restoring power much faster, perhaps even saving lives.
The AirDAT technology can also be used via drones to determine precise causes of outages.
Davis is working out of his home with the design he developed originally as a Masters’ Thesis at the University of Texas-Austin. The Bryan-born, College Station-raised Davis also attended Texas A&M’s campus at Qatar. He had also been in the Navy, stationed for a period in California.
Davis moved to Lockhart in 2010.
He said his idea originally came from AEP (American Electric Power), where AEP had put out a question to different firms asking if such technology was possible “at a high, theoretical level” to do assessment using LiDAR.
“Someone associated with AEP approached me because I had done a lot of work with them,” Davis said. “They thought it would be the kind of thing I would be capable of. It ended up with me competing with Lockheed Martin. It was kind of a competition between the two of us and I prevailed in that. I was able to come up with a conceptual solution that was functional.”
Davis said things were sidetracked for a while, but later Entergy expressed high interest in his plan.
In December 2022, Entergy financed a proof of concept.
Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana in 2021, and almost a year later, Entergy did a test run with AirDAT.
“Even though it was well after the storm, it was a good test environment because they had data from prior to the storm,” Davis said. “We did a live test of the storm-affected area based on pre-storm data to see if it would find damage that was still out there. We were successfully able to do that.”
Hurricane Francine hit Louisiana in September and Entergy wanted Davis to respond with his equipment in two days.
“Immediately after the storm hit, they flew, then flew the data to me to San Marcos,” Davis said. “They gave the hard drive, then flew back. I’ve never flown on a private plane, but I’ve had a private plane bring me a hard drive.
“I saw it as a really good opportunity where we could showcase and prove what we could do. I was able to get results in about 24 hours. If I had a week’s notice ahead of the storm I probably could have gotten results out in more like 12 hours. Their goal was to be able to do damage assessment in 36 hours or less. For them, that totally changes the game. That completely changes their ability to respond.”
The technology is a game changer for utility companies.
“Right now, when a storm hits, they do effectively the exact same thing,” Davis said. “They just send guys out there to visually inspect everything. They don’t have anything more sophisticated than that.”
Circuits, Davis explained are very large. One circuit can be up to 100 miles, even if it’s in an area such as Lockhart because it goes up and down streets, perhaps with hundreds of power poles involved.
“I think in Florida right now they’ve pulled in more than 30,000 contractors,” Davis said, referring to the damage caused by Hurricane Milton. “The cost to the utility companies for pulling in these guys is many, many hundreds of dollars per hour. With their trucks and everything included, they could be getting $800 an hour just to drive around and look for damage. It’s so expensive, but it’s the only way they have to get the damage assessment.
“So, all during these times, instead of getting the power back on instantly, they’re spending days out there trying to figure out what needs to be fixed first. That increases the cost to the public. It increases loss of life. The goal obviously is to get power back on as quickly as possible to mitigate all of this.”
Entergy’s news publication has highlighted its use of AirDAT.
“The guys I’m working with at Entergy want to go full hog on this,” Davis said. “They want to buy several planes. They want to spend a lot of money and use this as a tip of their spear so to speak in their damage assessment, so whenever a storm hits, they get out there and fly and we can figure out where everything is broken really fast.”
Davis plans to keep his business in Lockhart.
“I like to do outdoor stuff,” he said. “In this area, I’m real big into canoe racing. I wanted to be in the Austin area, but more in the country. This is a good, kind of central location where I have access to the rivers and there is cool mountain biking. I just really like the location.”
Davis’ company that’s working on this is EnergyBill.com, LLC. You can learn more about AirDAT at http://energybill.com/dtech24
