When we hear a helicopter flying over it isn’t necessarily the police or an air ambulance. There is another way to fly over Italy, travelling its entire length, from north to south. Literally. The Terna team is well aware of this. The team uses the LiDar, a remote sensing system that measures the distance to an object or surface using a laser pulse. The team scours the whole country by helicopter, to verify the safety of the electricity grid that almost 60 million people use daily. A job that is gratifying but technically very delicate, as explained by Gaetano Ciancotti, one of the ten members of this team, and above all one of the two technicians who physically takes to the sky, alternating weekly or biweekly with his colleague: “We mostly measure the distance of plants from the overhead power lines, i.e. the pylons, to prevent vegetation from coming into contact with the lines and causing an electric discharge”. Essentially, a cartographer working for the grid.
Terna's technician Gaetano Ciancotti is part of the team that scours the country by helicopter using a highly advanced radar detection system. And he tells us about his Italy seen from above.
The laser tool, which collects the data that is then processed and delivered to the local offices for any maintenance work, accurately measures the distance of the tree branches while Ciancotti flies over the area in question in the helicopter: “Depending on the voltage levels of the power lines, the safety distance varies from 3 to 8 meters. And if the tree branches are closer than that, our colleagues in the area intervene promptly”. With this system, which Terna had been outsourcing until 2016 and which instead has been done in-house since 2017, Ciancotti and his colleagues are able to monitor, on a continuous cycle, the entire Italian electricity grid that falls within wooded areas. "The the company manages over 70,000 kilometres of power lines, of which about 50,000 kilometres pass through wooded areas. We inspect up to 300-350 kilometres a day. I started in 2017 and a few weeks ago I completed my own tour of Italy: travelling by car, train and helicopter I have been to every province in the country”.
"Right now I am in Sicily, one of my favourite places, and in a few days we will fly over Etna, an incredible feeling. But I could talk about many breath-taking places, in Sicily alone there is Taormina or the Valley of the Temples, and then there is the Amalfi Coast, the Royal Palace of Caserta, the Dolomites, the Mole Antonelliana, Venice, and I could go on and on. Thanks to Terna I have been able to see all of these places, to meet many different people and I have learned so much".
Ciancotti joined Terna in 2007 at just 19 years old with a diploma as an electrician, he is know one of the ‘invisible’ people who, with the help of technology, contribute to making our electrical utilities safe and efficient every day. But he isn’t the one who flies the helicopter: “Terna relies on the services of an external company that always makes sure we are completely safe when we fly, taking into account weather conditions and the characteristics of the terrain. For example, the mountains are beautiful but monitoring and surveying these areas is more complex, we fly up to 3,000 meters high and the vegetation is very dense. Over plains or coastal areas it is less complicated but in any case we still take precise measurements”. When he isn’t flying, Ciancotti schedules the flights for the following week and helps colleagues process the data from the week before. “90% of our work is measuring the distance of plants, but there is 10% that has to do with planning and the surveys for the rationalisation or reconstruction of some power lines. In that case we provide colleagues with aerial photography, like Google Earth images, and 3D reconstructions of everything that is on the site: not just plants but also buildings, streets and bridges”.
It is all information that is need by those who are planning any type of work on the grid, regardless of whether or not the vegetation is in the way. Information that is collected through a tour of Italy from an advantageous observation point, the sky: “When they say that Italy is beautiful, it’s really true. I can attest to it, especially when seen from the sky, all of Italy is wonderful. "Right now, for example, I am in Sicily, one of my favourite places, and in a few days we will fly over Etna, an incredible feeling. But I could talk about many breath-taking places, in Sicily alone there is Taormina or the Valley of the Temples, and then there is the Amalfi Coast, the Royal Palace of Caserta, the Dolomites, the Mole Antonelliana, Venice, and I could go on and on. Thanks to Terna I have been able to see all of these places, to meet many different people and I have learned so much. And I am grateful”. And we are grateful to him, for the vital job that he does.