LineVision

Continually looking for new and better ways to deliver power, LineVision is accelerating the transition to clean energy and a net-zero grid. Its dynamic line rating technology equips utilities with real-time monitoring and analytics to improve electrical grid capacity, resilience, and safety.

Instead of spending millions on building more transmission lines, utilities use LineVision’s solutions to relieve constraints and gain capacity from existing systems—without live line work or scheduled outages. The technology detects anomalies, issues real-time risk alerts, and overall improves industrial asset management.

LineVision's business was growing, but its process could not scale. From installation to calibration, the company’s solutions are completely hands-off for utility partners. During each new site set-up, drones capture 3-D LiDAR point cloud data of power lines and lattice towers. Utility companies then use that data to guide sensor installation and calibration.

To establish a baseline for each new customer, LineVision’s field tech team conducts a detailed, 3-D scan of the area. This scan captures precise information about where sensors exist and what they sense around them—from trees and birds to transmission line phases. The team then annotates the data so LiveVision can provide its utility customers with real-time, dynamic line ratings.

“Utility partners need LineVision to serve them data on a platter,” says Carson Casey, director of marketing for LineVision. “The data needs to be as easily digestible as possible to inform capacity decisions, guide end-of-life projections, and improve situational awareness."

As the business grew, the LineVision team hit the wall of scale: There were only so many annotations the team could handle, and the tedious, manual effort began to pull focus away from the core mission.

They had to find a better way. The search for an expert data annotation partner began.

The LineVision team found that CloudFactory was—and is—that better way. To support the company’s need for precision and accuracy while ensuring a fast turnaround time, CloudFactory data analysts use PiX4D to annotate the survey data drones and humans capture during each site set-up.

“CloudFactory helps us quickly annotate that information with one-centimeter-degree precision so we know where sensors are relative to key pieces of infrastructure,” says Elliott Gould, director of data operations and analytics at LineVision.

The annotated data runs through a data pipeline, which calculates conduction sag in real-time. As the dataset grows over months and years, a true picture emerges of how conductors are performing compared to expectations against digital twins. The data also gives utility companies the confidence to know how much capacity they can add to the grid at any given time while still being safe.

Because LineVision’s work is project-based, the number of site surveys it conducts varies from a few to several each week. CloudFactory scales its workforce to match LineVision’s workload—and will scale up further as the company partners with more utilities.

Thanks to its partnership with CloudFactory, LineVision is growing—and delivering data faster than ever before. CloudFactory’s work has helped the monitoring company achieve capacity-saving goals within weeks instead of months—and reduced turnaround time by 66%.

“The results have exceeded our expectations,” says Gould. “CloudFactory’s data analysts crunch calibrations faster and more accurately than ever before. And their working across time zones, during our off hours, suits us enormously.”

Gould also says he appreciates CloudFactory’s dedication to pragmatically evolving the annotation instructions. “They’ve stayed true to the task but also built the instructions to meet the needs of the data analysts doing the work,” he says.

Today, with growth on the horizon and the mission in focus, LineVision is well on its way to securing a path to a net-zero future.