Jason Price
When it comes to grid resilience and reliability, how can you utilities better leverage technology to stay ahead of growing risks with an increase in extreme weather events, aging infrastructure and a need for more proactive asset management, utilities are looking for solutions that can provide faster insights, greater automation and improve safety. Can drones be the missing piece to this puzzle? That's exactly what we'll be diving into today on power perspectives. How autonomous drones are shifting from pilot project. Effects to enterprise wide solutions that help utilities detect failures before they happen, reduce field true risks, and for our regular listeners, a quick reminder that new in 2025, we now have video accompanying this podcast. If you're used. To just listening on your favorite podcast app, check. Out the show notes for. The YouTube link where you can now watch. Our perspective interviews in full and I'm Jason Price coming to you from New York City. Joining me as always is Matt Chester. Podcast producer and community manager for Energy Central and coming to us from Orlando, FL. Matt, how prevalent are drones being discussed in the energy central community?
Matt Chester
It's a good question, Jason. And I'd say drones as a topic. It's definitely evolved at on Energy Central from a curiosity to being a serious and and tangible conversation. We're seeing more utility pros, not just talking about. Drones in the context of maybe post storm surveys or wildfire response, but as part of a a broader strategic dual kit for proactive asset management, putting that another way, the sentiment shifted from should we try drones to how do we scale and plug it into our core operations? So when the tool comes up in our community, it's about utility professionals seeking out. How to turn these drones from maybe tech demos into day-to-day utility workhorses? And I think today's conversation in the podcasts it's gonna hit right at the heart of. That evolution.
Jason Price
Thanks, mayor. And before we jump in, I want. To give a big thanks to Sky. Video the sponsor of today's episode and today's discussion is set to bring real World case studies, industry insights, and a look at what's next in AI powered grid inspections. Joining us is Christina Parks, senior director of energy strategy at SKYDIO. Before that, Christina was with the New York Power Authority for 15 years leading digital transformation initiative. So clearly she's. At the forefront of drone innovation, and she approaches it with a deep understanding of how utilities can adopt and scale these technologies effectively. So Christina Park, welcome to Energy Essentials Power Perspectives podcast.
Christina Park
Thanks, Jason. Happy to be here.
Jason Price
As are we, so we're thrilled to jump in. So, Christina, you've had a front row seat to the evolution of drones and utilities. How has the landscape taken hold in recent years? And what is the current landscape of opportunities for drones in utilities?
Christina Park
So in the last decade, drones have really gone from being R and. The initiatives and seen as toys on the field that are experimental to more of a vetted technology tool that's now part of the actual workflow. So when we talk about operations and maintenance across many different departments on the field, whether you're in engineering or whether you're actually alignment out there doing the work, we've seen that drones are. Actually embedded in ways that they weren't before and what's exciting is that we're now at a place where drone and drone solution. Are becoming infrastructure and I'll talk a little bit more about this as we go. But the concept of being able to dock a drone and use it without a human being there physically to fly it in the presence of the drone really opens up a new world for utility operations and maintenance. So with the remote operations, you could really fly them from anywhere in the world. And share the results of that in real time to any of your stakeholders. So I think. That is the current landscape. I wanna say future, but I I think the future is here now.
Jason Price
And as I mentioned, I know you come from come to this program with a deep history working at utilities. So can you share how you think that shaped your perspective on the best way that utility companies can should approach these types of drone opportunities?
Christina Park
So in my most recent tenure at the New York Power Authority and in working with many other utilities since I came to skydio 2 years ago, I found that it's really important in any endeavor to start by establishing what problem or problems you're trying to solve. So I think one of the mistakes that's commonly made is to get enamored by technology and to think about using technology for this. Like. Of digital transformation or for the sake of that evolution itself. But I think that it really comes back to saying, well, what is the outcome that I want to see by making a change. So implementing any sort of change is challenging for many reasons. But if we go back to first principles thinking, I believe that solutions are best found when complex problems are broken down into very simple. Ones and then prioritized. So when it comes to technology like drones, it's not just a matter of flying them, but thinking of them as advanced, autonomous and intelligent sensors that give the opportunity for data and information to be collected and distributed to the stakeholders that need them most.
Jason Price
All right. I want you to think about problems that. Rooms are able to solve now in the utilities sector. What are some say, case studies or the most successful opportunities that you've seen, you know penetrate the market and then what are types of solutions that you think are coming next and are increasing digital industry?
Christina Park
Sure. I think even now what we can see is drones give a very easy solution to the problem of putting people in the air. So many of the problems that utilities face. The defects that occur, the damage that happens on the aging infrastructure and and the grid, a lot of them are just difficult to see from the ground. And so I think there are a couple of problems that are very easily solved and utilities are doing this today by putting their eyes up in the sky. So not having to put somebody physically up in a bucket truck or. Physically repelling down the side of a dam or or some sort of structure inherently decreases the risk for the worker. That being said, many times we're not even putting a person up there because inspection. I mean that's obviously very expensive. Risky. There's just not enough time and not enough people to do that for all of the assets that exist out there, so many inspections we found in workflows operate on a time based schedule. You go out there quarterly, daily, weekly to look with your eyeballs, right? And you have some sort of expert, whether it's alignment and engineer, who knows the components that they're looking at. And who can look for damage and defects that occur? What we found is that with the conditions that exist today, the usage of the. Equipment and the climate change and the increase of disasters that are happening and just the age of the infrastructure that's out there. It's just not getting inspected enough and maintenance is increasingly reactive. Basically, when something goes down or something goes wrong or there's a call or the power is out, that's when you send somebody. But it would be great if you were able to get in front of that and be proactive and do preventative maintenance and detect those small problems before they become big. So what we found is, for example, with AP, there's a really nice example of a transmission static line failure where the equipment specialist got a call in the middle of the night to go out to the substation because the transmission static line had failed. This caused a major outage. I think it ended up costing millions of dollars, lots of overtime. Lots of Labor, lots of equipment replacement. And in the middle of that, he went out and he threw one of our drones up in the air just to inspect the the area. And he found that the adjacent static line had similar damage that was going to cause an imminent failure. So if you think about that scenario, that is not something number one in the face of a an existing crisis, to be able to spare. Resources and equipment to go scale neighboring structures to to check right? That's not something that's very easily done in the face of a crisis. At the same time, being able to. Thought that helped them to do that repair and mitigate that damage before the very same failure would have happened again. So I think this is a really nice example because you can see a direct comparison of one failure that happened where they were able to quantify what the cost was in terms of Labor. Dollars and dollars of having that failure. But then you could directly translate that to. A cost avoided by preventing the very same failure that would have happened in the same scenario. So I think that's one case study that's very exciting and easy to quantify in terms of the value of proactive and preventative maintenance and having information that's really hidden in plain sight but not easily attainable by traditional methods.
Jason Price
That's a great case study. All right. So, I mean, one of the big challenges, I think the industry is trying to address is moving from pilot to a full scale deploy. So in your words, what's the biggest hurdle in that? And why do you think now is? Finally, we're finally shifting towards that full deployment.
Christina Park
Yeah, I think that the biggest hurdle to change in general is nobody likes change. I think when you have an industry that's as critical as utilities, where failure is not an option, change can be a very scary thing. So there needs to be a very. Strong case for change, which I think there is at in 2025 at this point. The time, and I think utilities are in a place where grid modernization efforts have really progressed and data-driven decision making has become a priority. So I think that the landscape and the temperature has changed in recent years, but also I think when we think about shifting towards full scale deployment and having that kind of vision. The major thing is just that utilities are in need of some sort of workforce multiplier. I think at the end of the day, there is just too much work to do and not enough people to do it and not enough dollars. To do it, and I think that when we're faced with that reality, it becomes obvious that something needs to be different in order to get more output with the same amount of input. And I think there are many factors for which this is the case. But you know, I think when a lot of this equipment was set up 50-60 years ago. 70 Plus it was really made for a different time. Right. Like I think we've evolved quite a bit in, in a short amount of time in terms of going from gas powered St. lamps to electricity in every home to electric. I mean, even for myself, we bought an electric vehicle, we installed a charger, our electric bills went up right. Clearly our gas bills went down. But at the same time the load that. Each individual home and business. Is requiring is higher than it was 50-60 years ago, so the infrastructure that was created is just no longer sufficient and I think utilities we can see now that they're looking into other forms of generation and looking into increasing their ability to support that demand. And in this in the same light, I think we can see just if we look in the news. You can see there's an increase in wildfires that are. Just popping up there is an increase in storms and catastrophic storms that are causing a lot of damage to infrastructure, and I think every day we can maybe not every day, every few weeks we can see that there's another community that has the power out and the utility is really scrambling to restore that power. So I think given the criticality of the need for electricity. And the challenging landscape both. Internally and externally, that utilities are facing the case for change is really here and I think that the desire for deployment and the desire to make those data-driven decisions and justify priorities is really. Out of forefront?
Jason Price
My understanding is that you know, utilities are looking at basically going from a small drone program and the need to scale it up to size where it has a, you know, a meaningful. Will impact talk to us about, you know, what is it that about the utility program that you think would be successful if it were to move in that direction of more of an enterprise wide?
Christina Park
Solution. Yeah, I think this is really timely for where a lot of utilities are now and scaling an enterprise wide solution, whether it's drones or an asset management software or or literally. Rolling out iPads and tablets into. Your field, I think any sort of enterprise wide solution sounds great, but is in reality very, very challenging. As I said before, I think it really starts with identifying the pain points both at a high level for utility executives such as reducing O&M, lowering risk or maximizing performance, but also requires that definition. At the department level, to really engage stakeholders across generation, transmission, distribution or across maybe your different power plant site. Depending on how you're organized, but I think there needs to be some sort of establishment of value across multiple use cases to work cross functionally across the organization. So utilities like any other major organization, have a tendency to be siloed, right? I think that's just a reality of any large organization. And that's where it becomes difficult to scale anything enterprise wide, because I think that when you start in just one department with one. Initiative. It really ends up kind of starting and dying there, right? Or showing value in one small corner where at the end of the day, the other side of your business. Might not even. Know that it exists and I think that's actually very common. So I think that to scale a program, it requires having extremely visionary leadership to see what an improved future state could look like. For the entire organization. But then empowering the leaders in your organization to make the investments, adjustments and plan in order to achieve it. So change as we know doesn't happen overnight, but I think that successful organizations are the ones that have a very, very thoughtful and intentional short, medium and long term plan of how they're going to adopt. And ultimately be able to undergo that transformation.
Jason Price
Yeah, I would. Agree. And there's even the possibility of, you know, the application of drones in ways we haven't been thought of yet. So I think there's there's a lot of room for growth. There. So on that note, let me ask you the following. Where does AI and autonomy, you know, work into the into the vernacular here with when we're discussing drugs, how has you know, advancements of these types of tools impacted the way that drones are thought about and and being used in the field?
Christina Park
Yeah, you know, AI has become such a buzzword in the last 5-10 years, and I think it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And I actually think there's an inherent risk towards gravitating towards the shiny object or the buzzword just to say we are using AI and and we're seeing benefit out of it. I think it's really important to define. Line and harness what you're giving over to the software or the machine and where the human in the loop role is, and I think that human is actually still very, very critical, especially for utilities. So if I give an example, I think we've all used that GPT in one form or another. One of the things that I found is that you can ask the same question. 2 Chad GBT and get very, very different answers based on how you ask it, because the way that AI models have been trained and and I've done this for models that we've actually trained and gotten very like a very bad answer and a very good answer. So I think that all this is to say that AI is a tool. It's another tool that the user should. Learn how to use effectively in order to take out some of the more mundane tasks that need to be done and enable them to actually do their job better. It's not necessarily there to take. Over, but I think in order to assist. So for example if we talk about drones, we have skydio, we have AI built into our drones. Autonomy is something that our Founders bet big on over 10 years ago when we were founded as really the future. So anybody can go to a Costco or Walmart and buy a cheap drone off the shelf and, you know, probably. Get the battery charged and get it up in the air. But I think that when we think about enterprise solutions, it's actually really important to have an Intellij. Agent tool in your toolbox that you can use that can as I said, remove some of the more mundane, tedious or dangerous parts of your workflow and substitute it in order to free you up in order to use your expertise to do the actual parts of your job that are going to bring systems back. Online or to do repairs or to make assessments. So so some of the features that you can see with AI and our drones that we've built in are in obstacle avoidance, the ability to land safely, modeling the path and understanding the safest way to return home. These are all things as the drone flies, it's really taking in the surroundings. Understanding what is around it, what it should and should not fly into, right so I could actually push forward and have it go straight into a tree and the drone will recognize I have an obstacle in front of me. This is not safe. I am going to go around it or above it or under it, depending on what I see and as I complete a mission and I do an inspection. When I hit return home, it's actually a way for me to reduce my cognitive load as the user to think about. I need to make sure I don't crash into this. I need to make especially around critical infrastructure like power. Lines, right? But I can just hit a return home button and use my brain to do something else out in the field and know that the drone has mapped out its surroundings and it will find the safest way to get back. So I think this is where AI can be really valuable. It really lowers the amount of energy and attention. That a user has. To use that normally, they would not have to think about if I was walking around right, my brain thinks about what I'm looking at and make sure that I don't walk into that tree. So the drone in the same way does. The same thing.
Jason Price
Yeah, it's. I mean it seems like a natural fit, right, if your utility and the the drone technology, I mean you it kind of like makes sense, it's almost like a no brainer. In some respects, but. Christina, you know you're in the C-Suite talking to the decision makers. There's always going to be, you know, late adopters or even those that are just hesitant to make the, the the kind of investment that is necessary here. But even though it's makes sense, right, So what do you think is holding? Them back and. And how do you help them overcome? You know this this issue of inertia. Or hesitation that it leads to.
Christina Park
Inertia. Sure. So I think that. Inertia is a really interesting concept. I I think I I really enjoyed science through high school and college, and when we think about an inertia, a body at rest wants to stay at rest. So getting it moving is is a really difficult thing. The exciting thing is a body in motion wants to stay in motion. So I think once you can get over that. Activation energy. And really get moving the momentum and the benefits and the value really cascade and snowball and it becomes much more easier. So when we think about getting a program off the ground or making the decision to to start one, it's understandable that an industry that's so critical and so established is just naturally risk averse. To change, I think there's a lot of prevailing thought if it if it's not broken, don't fix it. The power has been on for decades and we'll continue to keep it on the way we've done it. But I think that when we look hard at the biggest challenges that utilities are facing, there's really this moment in time today where it's just not possible to keep doing things the way they've always. And I think that if if you do the analysis and you just look at the fact that times have changed, it's just a reality that they need to do more with less. So when we think about, as I said before, the fact that that infrastructure is aging and probably aging faster due to the way that we're running our equipment and also when we look at the workforce that the culture, I think at least here in America. Has really changed in the last 50 years. Even when I when I came to NYPA at in 2007. And it was really the norm. Most of the my coworkers had been there for 20-30 years. The plan was to stay for the full 30 plus years of a career retire and it really takes kind of that amount of time to really understand how to run a utility. But I think that's just not maybe this is me showing my middle age, but that's just not the attitude of 22 year olds that graduate from college. Now, right, the norm is to really. Take a new opportunity every few years to expand your portfolio to try different industries and things like that. So I think in the reality of that, we see that a lot of subject matter experts are retiring a lot of the knowledge that has kept these power plants running and running well over the years, maybe out the door with retirement and at the end of the day. Succession planning may be invested in somebody who is not inclined to stay for 30 years of their career, so it becomes increasingly important to capture that knowledge in the data that exists in people's heads. Right, because you won't be able to just make a phone call and say. They you know, what did we do 10 years ago on this or what was not documented now needs to be documented. So I think that having digital tools like drones in order to capture and document and save that data and really pass it on and spread it to different stakeholders becomes really, really critical.
Jason Price
Yeah, I would agree that's that's very, very important to think about when utilities are making these kinds of investments and it's really preparing for the future. You know workforce and if they come in with using tools of yesteryear that you're just gonna have a problem attracting, you know, the next generation of leaders that you to. So those are those are good points. So how about this with the AI autonomy and the drone technology and the ever evolving needs of the utility, what has got you excited about, you know, drones and the drone program, what do you see, you know, 5-10 years out in this space that we should all looking at as a North star?
Christina Park
I want to say 5-10 years but it is really starting now. It's the future of remote operations, so I think when everyone thinks about drones, they think about someone with a controller standing there looking up at the sky and the drone is up in the. They're inspecting whatever it needs to inspect, and I think that is exciting and some utilities are trying to get from traditional to hand flown, but I think with what we call dock and remote operations, there is the ability to have the drone live out there in your remote substation that is 8 hours of a drive away, right? Or to have it live out there in. Rough terrain where it is going to be dangerous, particularly in certain times of the year, to send people out in in order to conduct some of these inspections, right. So when we think about putting a drone in a box or we we, what we call DOC out in a location and then being able to deploy that from anywhere in the world. There are so many possibilities, right? Like you can have a central digital monitoring facility where. You have an engineer or multiple engineers deploying many drones at the same time in many different facilities. So when I look at many of the utilities that are out there, New York Power Authority, we obviously serve the state of New York well. The state of New York is not small right from from Buffalo over in Western New York down to headquarters in White Plains that that's still a nine hour drive. Right. But I think that when I look at AP, when I look at Southern Company and and many of these other utilities, their footprints are quite large, they cross multiple states. I think even Southern California Edison, they have to serve Catalina Island. So in order to go and serve some of the parts of their communities, you have to get on a ferry, you have to get on a helicopter. These are things that are very expensive, time-consuming. And take a lot of man hours. So I think what's really exciting is the ability to strategically place these drones out there so that a human doesn't have to take the time, the energy, or assume the risk in order to go out there themselves. And I think that there are many advancements with the FAA in terms of what you're able to do beyond visual line of sight or BV loss. As we call it, and that's something that we at skydio as we deploy and create our dock solutions, that is also something in House that we realize it. It doesn't matter if you have a great piece of technology if you're not allowed to use it. So we've been doing a lot of work and seeing a lot of progress with attaining these waivers, particularly for critical industries like utilities. So that you can use them for your substations, your areas outside of substations and not need to have a person there.
Jason Price
Christine, you mentioned remote operations. Can you talk a bit more about that and where can I listen? As I learn more about this topic.
Christina Park
Yeah, that's a great question, Jason. Our live remote virtual demo is actually here now operational and we'd love to give you a demo and have you flying from wherever you are. So if you live in New York like myself, you could be flying from your computer and launch a drone off of our rooftop in San Mateo, CA. And it's pretty exciting to see. So you can view this in real time and also use what we call readylink. There's a QR code that we can have you scan. So anyone in your organization can see you fly even if they're not sitting right next to you. If you'd like to have a demo, please come to our website skydio.com. That's skydio.com and contact us and we'd love to set. Up a demo for you.
Jason Price
So Christina, we're going to give you the final word, but we are now shifting towards what we call the Lightning round, which gives us an opportunity to learn a little bit more about you, the person rather than you, the professional. So I'm going to throw a set of questions at you. We ask you to keep your. Answer to you know a short answer, one word or phrase or or a short sentence. So Are you ready? Sure. Alright. What would be your superpower of choice?
Christina Park
So this is a little bit situational because I'm just recovering from a full Achilles rupture, but it would definitely be the power of healing.
Jason Price
Your dream vacation destination.
Christina Park
I've been here once before. I always said that we would go back for some anniversary someday. But Tahiti?
Jason Price
Best use of a drone outside of your career.
Christina Park
Well. I love taking pictures and I will say that the drone is probably the best selfie stick that you'll ever.
Jason Price
Have this one's a little tricky because we're asking one word, but what's one word that sums up the future of energy?
Christina Park
If I had to choose one word, I would say evolving.
Jason Price
All right. So we also collect lightning round questions from past podcast guests. So this one is from Amy Myers Jaffe. She left the following question for you to answer. That is, what would you tell your 22 year old self about building a career in energy?
Christina Park
I would say that much like. Parenting the days are long, but the years are. Short so I think for me when I started my career, it was very daunting to say I'm starting on a 10 year life extension and monetization project and I'm going to start as an engineer and 10 years later I'm going to be the lead who's running it and it's something I couldn't have imagined or I couldn't have imagined staying somewhere for 10 years. Us. But I think that it's something that it creeps up on you. How how long it takes to really understand. But when you do understand the industry and how the power is made and and some of those complex problems, it's actually very rich and you feel like you are a part of something that you're delivering something that's very important. And critical to the nation, every industry needs it. Every home needs it. But I think that in the day-to-day when you're running around, it can be very stressful and just seem like you're putting out fire after fire after fire. Or in my case, leak after leak after leak. But in hindsight, it was well worth it and I feel like all of those years and those projects and those crises really built up into a very niche market of expertise which I'm very proud to have now. And and it's it's very exciting to work with people who are here to really deliver a critical function to society.
Jason Price
Alright, so now it's your turn. We're gonna ask. You can ask a question to a future guest. So your your name will be mentioned in the future. Show and the question can be related to energy or an off. The wall question.
Christina Park
This may be showing where I am in my parenting today, but who is your favorite Disney hero and why?
Jason Price
That's an excellent question considering that I have three children under the age of 10. I I I can probably name off more Disney princesses than I then I would be willing to admit, but great question. Looking forward to response for that one, we'll need to be strategic on who to ask that to maybe a future, maybe a CEO of utility would be interesting to see.
All right. Well, fantastic. Thank you. Did a great job navigating the Lightning round. And as I promised you would get the final word. So knowing that you've got utility decision makers listening in, what are, you know, some key steps you would advise that they consider as they build a pathway towards, you know, incorporating or operationalizing drones in? Their business so. Where should they start and just what? Are your thoughts around that?
Christina Park
I think you should always start by defining the problem that you want to solve. So sitting down with your key stakeholders and saying what are your biggest pain point. And what does success look like to you? What is the outcome that you want to achieve? I think that once those are really defined and also aligned across your key stakeholders, then I think that's where the solution comes in. So I think that's been my experience in terms of seeing success or failure in new initiatives. And then I think it's a question of. What do you do in order to achieve them? How are you going to measure success and really understanding how to make a short, medium and long term plan? I I think that it's very easy to see in the short. Or I want to purchase something, put it up in the air, and hope that I see results. But I think understanding what results you want to see beforehand is really, really important.
Jason Price
Or nice, nicely stated and and much appreciate your insight today and I, I implore our energy central listeners to, you know, share their questions and comments on. The platform and then he come through, we will send him your way, Christina. So you could keep the conversation going, but until then, we wanna thank you for sharing us your insight on today's podcast.
Christina Park
Yeah. Thanks for having me. This was really fun.
Jason Price
Awesome. And you can always reach Christina through the energy central platform where she welcomes your questions and comments. And we also want to give a shout out of thanks to the podcast sponsor. Others that made today's episode possible, thanks to Sky dot Skydio, helps utilities move beyond outdated time based maintenance to smarter, safer and more scalable condition based maintenance. Powered by autonomous remote operated drones, over 280 utilities trusts Sky DL. Because with real time aerial data and remote inspection, utilities can spot issues early, reduce forced outages and make confident, efficient, cost effective decision. Once again, I'm your host, Jason Price. Plug in and stay fully charged in the discussion by hopping into the community at energycentral.com and we'll see you next time at Energy Central. Power perspectives podcast.
