Analysis of Safety for UAV Inspection of Electric Field in 220 kV Substation

As an emerging method of substation inspection, when unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is too close to the substation during the inspection process, it can cause interference to its normal operation, causing damage to the internal electrical structure of the drones or discharges. In order to analyze the safety of UAV substation inspection, we construct a simplified electric field simulation model for UAV and 220 kV substation, and use finite element method to simulate and analyze the changes in their electric field. The UAV inspection methods are divided into three types: UAV traverse insulation intervals for inspection, UAV conduct inspections near wires, and UAV patrol above insulation intervals, the variation of maximum surface field strength of unmanned aerial vehicles under three inspection methods is simulated and calculated separately. The maximum surface electric field strength of the UAV during the UAV conduct inspections near wires is 768 kV/m, less than air breakdown field strength (3000 kV/m). As a result, under the condition of only considering the influence of electric field, UAV is safe under these three inspection methods.