ASSET MAPPING PLATFORM FOR EMERGING COUNTRIES ELECTRIFICATION

Project Information

AMPERE

Grant agreement ID: 870227

DOI

10.3030/870227

Project closed

EC signature date 28 November 2019

Start date 1 February 2020

End date 30 June 2022

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies – Space

Total cost

€ 2 109 155,25

EU contribution

€ 1 586 968,88

Coordinated by

FREE SOFT & TECH SRL
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - AMPERE (ASSET MAPPING PLATFORM FOR EMERGING COUNTRIES ELECTRIFICATION)

Reporting period: 2021-02-01 to 2022-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Despite advances in overall global electrification rates, access to electricity for all is still far from achieved. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that 1.2 billion people are without access to electricity, representing 17% of the global population.

The solution to the crisis in the electricity sector of the Dominican Republic (DO) is important to restore the country's competitiveness, ensure sustained growth and reduce poverty levels and impact on environment. The tax burden through direct and indirect subsidies has displaced necessary social expenses, thus rising production costs and reducing potential for attracting investment. Recurrent requirement of public resources for the electricity sector in DO has its origin, mainly, on the following issues:
Operational inefficiency of electric distribution companies
Inefficient tariff system inefficient and poor demand management
High costs and vulnerability of generation matrix

AMPERE proposes a solution based on a GIS Cloud mapping technology, collecting on field data acquired with optical/thermal cameras and LIDAR installed on board a Remote Piloted Aircraft (RPA). In particular, a RPA will be able to fly over selected areas performing semi-automated operations to collect optical and thermal images as well as 3D LiDAR-based reconstruction products. Such products are post processed at the central cloud GIS platform allowing operators in planning and monitoring activities by means of visualization and analytics tools can resolve data accessibility issues and improve the decision making process.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Innovation outcomes: prototypes and solutions

Two (2) prototypes have been developed.

Industrial grade multi-rotor aircraft payload
A dedicated payload has been installed on a commercial (DJI M300 RTK) rotorcraft drone and can perform a complete 3D laser scanning to provide a high-resolution map of the powerline, with a centimetric level resolution for a detailed infrastructure analysis. Main internal components:
• Livox Mid-40 LiDAR
• Septentrio Mosaic X-5, a multi-band, multi-constellation GNSS receiver E1/E5/E6 AltBoc enabled
• Sensonor STIM300 IMU
• Raspberry Pi 4 on-board Computer
• Raspicam v2 Optical Camera
Integrated drone for mapping and surveillance
A dedicated fixed wing drone has been manufactured for long range mission (80 km per flight (BVLOS)- emabrking RGB and/or thermal cameras

Four (4) testing activities have been arranged:
• Maddaloni (CE) – May 2021
• Castel Campagnano (CE) – August 2021
• Pietrelcina (BN) – September 2021
• Acerra (NA) – October 2021

One /(1) product has been implemented for market uptake.
AMPERE Cloud GIS platform (ACGP)
ACGP is a solution based on a GIS Cloud mapping technology, collecting on field data acquired with optical/thermal cameras and LIDAR installed on board a Remote Piloted Aircraft (RPA). In particular, thermal images as well as 3D LiDAR-based reconstruction products are collected and post processed at the central cloud GIS platform allowing operators in planning and monitoring activities by means of visualization and analytics tools resolving data accessibility issues and improve the decision-making process. This platform is now commercialised via a deciated company, namely The SARA Project s.r.l. (TSP). Mobile app available on play store (android); IOSversion coming soon on apple store in Q4 2022.


Exploitation and dissemination
According to the Dissemination Plan, two main activities have been performed:
Meeting with Stakeholders - CODIA (Colegio Dominicano de Ingenieros, Arquitectos y Agrimensores. / Dominican Association of Engineers, Architects and Surveyors) 24/02/2020
Meeting with Stakeholders - Ministerio de Energía y Minas. / Ministry of Energy and Mines 24/02/2020
Meeting with Stakeholders - Corporación Dominicana de Empresas Eléctricas Estales. / Dominican Corporation of Electric State Companies. 25/02/2020
Meeting with Stakeholders Instituto Dominicano de Aviación Civil. / Dominican Institute of Civil Aviation 25/02/2020
Meeting with Stakeholders - Unidad de Electrificación Rural y Sub-urbana. / Rural and sub-urban Electrification Unit 26/02/2020
Meeting with Stakeholders - Embajada de la Unión Europea. / European Union Embassy. 26/02/2020
User Consultation Platform 2020 December 2020
Perspectivas de la navegación satelital en república dominicana: galileo y el proyecto ampere May 2021
IEEE Metroaerospace 23-25 June 2021
AMPERE campaign validation – Outcomes presentation 27 May 2022
2022 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS – ICUAS 24 June 2022
ASITA 2022 - Conferenza Nazionale di Geomatica e Informazione Geografica 23- 24 June 2022
AMPERE final public conference June 2022


Activties have been disseminated on public social media
• www.h2020-ampere.eu
• https://twitter.com/AmpereH2020
• https://www.facebook.com/H2020-Ampere-110608797300334/
• https://www.instagram.com/h2020_ampere/
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8WMwQwL0Qgakx8aj_j30yQ

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

AMPERE project aims to reach a worldwide dimension, bringing consortium innovation and know-how to allow network intervention planning with a limited afforded financial risk above all for emerging non-European countries. Indeed, the challenge facing such communities goes beyond the lack of infrastructure assets: what is needed is a mapping of already deployed infrastructure (not known!) in order to perform holistic assessment of the energy demand and its expected growth over time
Currently, such activities are mainly performed through traditional solutions, i.e. handheld operators equipped infrared cameras to detect hot spots and corona discharges or helicopters. However, this solution is quite expensive, dangerous for the crew and presents several inefficiency factors (principally due to time consuming) consequently resulting in high operational costs.

As a consequence, several companies are working on a roadmap to implement a rigorous live line inspection strategy based on a completely automated mobile platform (basically a RPA) capable of a meaningful payload and a power line data management system including specific tool for image and signal data processing to automatically detect defects or abnormal conditions.
Lately, several RPA-based solutions (same AMPERE approach) have been developed in order to overcome the above-mentioned issues in the inspection and mapping activities. With regards to different service execution methods, the RPA-based one presents several advantages with respect to the traditional techniques. In particular:
• Real-time monitoring;
• Cost and time efficiency enhancement;
• Wider coverage area (enabled by the battery-size enlargement);
• Legal compliance, since RPAs use resolve safety-related issues;
• Possibility to use repairing tools immediately after an issue identification (an example may be the usage of RPAs equipped with flamethrowers to remove debris get stuck on the powerline);
• Maintenance prediction, in order to foresee possible issues that may emerge in future, avoiding any undesired shutdown;
• Continuity of the service of the powerline.

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