Moldelectrica enterprise tests drones to verify state of high-voltage power lines

Chisinau, 22 September /MOLDPRES/ - The drones of overflying and checking the state work of the high-voltage overhead power lines, donated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to the state enterprise Moldelectrica, today were tested in the northern Donduseni district, after three days of training backed by American experts.     

The drones were tested on the area of the vocational school from the Corbu village, Donduseni district, - a partner institution with Moldelectrica and which trains specialists in the energy sector.  

„Our employees benefit from trainings, in order to use drones both for the regular supervision of the electricity networks and for emergency scenarios related to the energy infrastructure. Thus, those 4,700 km of power networks from Moldova will be able to be better managed,’’ the deputy director of the Moldelectrica state enterprise, Sergiu Carmanschi, said.  

The donation, worth about one million dollars, was made through the USAID Moldova Energy Security Activity (MESA) Project and has the goal to modernize the electric energy transport infrastructure, consolidate Moldelectrica’s capacity and collect information on the state of the power networks, as well as efficiently and promptly respond to eventual incidents or defections, this contributing to the enhancement of the country’s energy resilience.    

„This donation is just an action of the string of measures which the United States assumed in the commitment to back Moldova’s government in the programme on energy security and uninterrupted supply of the citizens with electric energy. We will provide assistance for advanced solutions in the sector, as well as for modern and efficient equipment,’’ Head of the USAID Mission in Moldova Jeff Bryan said.  

For his part, a state secretary at the Energy Ministry, Constantin Borosan, said the drones, endowed with modern systems of digital monitoring of power lines, would allow optimizing the process of monitoring of the power lines, through collecting detailed air pictures on extended areas, thus cutting the cost of collecting data and improving the safety of Moldelectrica’s employees through the limiting of the human intervention. ‘Presently, we have 4,700 km of networks in Moldova; yet, in several years, they will be more, due to the projects which develop in the northern and southern regions of the country and which will connect us with the European Union much more or in this context, this technical support is quite necessary,’’ the official noted.    

USAID has been cooperating with Moldova for more than ten years in diverse sectors, the goal of which is to strengthen the institution’s cyber security, carry out feasibility studies in the renewable energy field and facilitate the interconnection of Moldova’s electric energy system to the one of Romania and, implicitly, the system of the continental Europe ENTSO-E.