Vantor and its partner Satelytics have expanded our shared offerings to the energy industry. In addition to the methane monitoring solution that has been on the market for several years, Satelytics is now introducing a vegetation encroachment solution that leverages Vantor's high-resolution satellite imagery.

Monitoring vegetation growth along utility lines and pipelines

Satelytics’ vegetation monitoring product leverages Vantor's high-resolution satellite imagery to identify vegetation, like the coniferous tree in the above screenshot, that could possibly fall on electrical distribution networks. This alert enables a utility company to go into the field and mitigate specific vegetation issues instead of spending time monitoring the whole transmission line from a truck.

Satelytics will generate risk profiles of vegetation in and around customer assets using mono- and stereo-imagery collections from the Vantor constellation, including the recently launched WorldView Legion satellites. This solution will lean on Vantor's collection capability of nearly 7 million sq km of capacity per day, which significantly outpaces any other commercial provider.

Monitoring vegetation growth along utility lines or pipelines with Vantor's 30 cm-class resolution satellite imagery and Satelytics’ value-added insights allows an energy company to prioritize sending ground crews to specific locations that are known to need trimming maintenance instead of having ground crews drive the entire lengths of lines, which can be hundreds of miles in distance.

This targeted vegetation maintenance allows the energy company to reduce search time and increase efficiency of field crews, proactively identify and address potential threats outside the immediate corridor, verify completed work and optimize contractor management, and improve overall grid reliability by reducing vegetation-related outages. To learn more about Satelytics’ vegetation management solution, read their blog post.

Producing methane detection alerts

Vantor's WorldView-3 satellite hosts a shortwave infrared (SWIR) sensor that collects imagery in wavelengths outside what the human eye can see. Satelytics uses this SWIR sensor to create a methane detection and measurement product for energy companies. Duke Energy’s Piedmont Gas division, a local distribution company that operates in the Midwest and Southeast U.S., uses Satelytics’ methane solution to improve operational efficiency, safety and reporting by quickly finding leaks, repairing them and reducing emissions across a five-state service territory. Since the beginning of 2022, Duke Energy has reduced recordable leaks by over 85% using Satelytics’ solution. To learn more about Satelytics’ methane detection and quantification alerts, read their blog post .

Satelytics’ methane solution analyzes Vantor's WorldView-3 high-resolution SWIR imagery to detect and measure small urban methane leaks from a local distribution network.

Satelytics has been innovating with Vantor's very high-resolution satellite imagery for nearly a decade, and we’re excited to see them expand their offerings to include vegetation management for utilities. The quality, currency and accuracy of our data enables use cases that require precision to make informed decisions and Satelytics is taking it a step further with their energy industry-focused products.

-Todd Surdey, SVP and GM of Enterprise at Vantor

Geospatial insights for informed monitoring and mitigation

The combined power of Vantor's high revisit, very high-resolution satellite imagery and Satelytics’ AI-driven algorithms provides energy companies with early detection geospatial insights and alerts that enable informed decision-making and minimize environmental risks.