Koch Ag and Energy Puts Percepto BVLOS Waiver to Use

From Percepto

Percepto, an autonomous inspection and monitoring solutions provider, recently received a nationwide beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) waiver. The waiver allows the company to operate uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) in shielded airspace, without humans onsite, and without expensive and cumbersome ground-based or airborne detect and avoid (DAA) systems, for inspection and monitoring operations at critical and non-critical infrastructure sites nationwide.

The waiver will allow Percepto to continue to expand drone operation programs with energy companies across the U.S. “Any industrial site in the U.S. that wants to have autonomous drone inspection of their facility can now obtain an autonomous drone system more easily and at lower cost than before,” said Neta Gliksman, VP, Policy and Government Affairs at Percepto.

Koch Ag and Energy, which has been working with Percepto for several years, uses drones for battery limit blind inspections during turnarounds, lay down yard inspections, security rounds, and other workflows. 

“In the continuous process chemical industry, we use drones to eliminate the four Ds: the dirty, dangerous, difficult, and disinteresting work that employees in our plants do on a daily basis,” said Tim Shanfelt, PMP, Operations Enablement Director at Koch Ag and Energy.

The company has been using drones for about three years. Shanfelt said, “As we have been going along, drones are increasingly a part of our life, and how we inspect and monitor our facilities.” It uses Percepto as its solutions provider, freeing up internal employees to do other important work. Using autonomous drones frees up effort on Koch’s “four D” work by having it be pre-programmed, scheduled, and performed without giving it a second thought.

“Most employees at our plants have central responsibilities and managing the drones typically is something that they do on top of that,” said Shanfelt. “With Percepto, they are receiving the reports through the AI-powered Autonomous Inspection & Monitoring platform instead of dedicating time to managing the drones.”

The Enid, Oklahoma, Koch Ag and Energy facility saw the benefits of autonomous inspections early on in its implementation when a polar vortex swept the Midwest and forced the facility to temporarily shut down operations. 

Before implementing a drone program, when potential freezes happened, they would introduce steam into the pipes and send people out on ladders and cherry pickers. Workers would inspect where infrastructure damage had occurred and observe which equipment had thawed enough to restore operations.

With drones, however, there’s now no need to send out humans to inspect infrastructure—drones can identify ice buildup and equipment damage. “We could see when relief valves were actually thawed after introducing steam into the pipes so that the plant could become operational,” said Shanfelt. “Not only did we keep employees out of harm's way, but our decision-makers had a tremendous amount of information. We were able to start up about two days earlier than we would have been able to otherwise because we had a true understanding of the facility’s status after the storm.”

The Koch Ag and Energy team is excited about the new potential of aerial drones. “With the new BVLOS waiver, we can further turn over the drone operations to Percepto, and let our workers review reports to make better decisions,” said Shanfelt.

With the new waiver, sites no longer need to use radar or human observers on the ground, saving a very large and significant expense. “By removing these costs, some of our customers who were budgeting for these expenses can now afford to expand their autonomous drone inspections to other sites,” said Gliksman.

By lowering cost and equipment barriers to autonomous drone programs, industrial companies can more easily implement solutions that save seven-figure amounts in meeting the challenges of operating efficiently, maintaining reliable critical infrastructure, meeting high productivity expectations, and increasing safety levels. 

“With real-time visibility into their facility’s infrastructure integrity, companies can find failures before they escalate into incidents,” said Gliksman. “In one instance, an oil & gas customer detected a methane gas leak within hours that could have gone unnoticed for months using conventional methods, saving the company millions of dollars, minimizing safety risks to workers, and preventing environmental damage.”

Percepto isn’t done yet. The current waiver enables it to operate freely in the U.S. in specific locations for critical infrastructure (i.e. class G airspace) but limits the drones' altitude at 200 feet. This puts restrictions on the use cases where drones can operate BVLOS. The next step is to reduce limitations on the areas that can be monitored (i.e. the class areas) and the altitude of the drones. 

As Percepto provides more data to the FAA to gain further confidence in remote operations, it will be able to use autonomous drones to monitor and inspect assets at higher elevations. “This is the next step for BVLOS and we are well on our way there,” concluded Gliksman.