Delivery drone contacts power lines in Brisbane and an outage follows

What happened

A food delivery drone operated by Wing came to rest on overhead power lines in Brisbane and caught fire. Energex said the drone landed on an 11,000-volt line and did not immediately take out power, but that voltage tracked across the drone, which then caught fire and fell. Energex shut the network down to respond. About 2,000 people were without electricity for around 45 minutes, and 300 customers had no power for three hours. Energex said the network was not damaged. Wing said the aircraft made a precautionary controlled landing, that it reported the incident, and that an outage occurred about two hours later during retrieval.

Contributing factors

The cause of the landing was not confirmed. Possible equipment malfunction or human error was suggested. Voltage tracking across the drone was reported to have led to the fire.

Lessons learned

1. Operators of aerial devices should keep clear of overhead lines.
2. Prompt reporting to the network operator supports isolation and restoration.
3. Retrieval near live lines needs coordination so that recovery does not itself interrupt supply.

Source

theverge.com