About Hayden Data

Infrastructure Monitoring: The Connection to Economies and Consumers

Why is infrastructure monitoring so vital to our modern life?

Because the infrastructure it’s monitoring is so vital to our modern life.

A country’s electricity consumption directly affects its economic output (gross domestic product per capita). People and commerce rely on electricity, no matter the source.

When a power grid fails, it makes electricity more expensive for everybody. Maintenance costs are passed along to consumers, influencing GDP on a global scale.

The relationship between electricity usage and the economic output of a country is critical. Any sustained outage can cause a mini-recession.

Utility companies need to know what’s happening in the field. Especially in remote locations. Are power poles down? Lines sagging? A brushfire raging?

Hayden Data Systems’ Technology Brings Real-Time Infrastructure Monitoring to the Most Remote Areas

The system is simple on the outside: An aluminum enclosure that’s usually attached to a utility pole. On the inside, there’s an array of sensors that measure:

Weather (temperature, wind speed, precipitation, etc.)
Environment (UV, smoke, gas leaks, etc.)
Structure (utility pole movement or collapse, line sagging, etc.)

Visuals are also available to provide confidence monitoring of vegetation growth, early fire detection, etc.

Weather conditions (temperature, wind, rain, humidity, sky, etc.)
Environmental conditions (gas leaks, smoke levels, seismicity, UV-A, UV-B)
Physical conditions (pole or structural movement, line sagging, vegetation management, early detection of wildfire/brushfire)
Data is transmitted through a self-healing, bi- and-multidirectional sub-GHz “mesh” network to a gateway unit. From there, it’s sent to a master control room at a utility or electric energy company where it can be analyzed with our visualization platform.

We transmit data using 4G and 3G technology, where available, with satellite backhaul for redundancy. In remote areas, a network of our units installed on each power pole can relay hundreds of sensor measurements down a line until it reaches cellular service.

Essentially, it turns a wooden power pole in the middle of nowhere into a “smart pole.”

Real-time comprehensive data collection and measurement can help ensure the integrity of utility systems, as well as the safety of people and communities around them. It provides an accurate early-failure warning, creating information that can avoid costly infrastructure failures.

Applications aren’t limited to utility poles. Hayden Data Systems’ technology can be used to measure precise data for:

Bridges
Buildings
Tunnels
Harbors and ocean buoys
Offshore drilling platforms
Early-warning detection for catastrophes

For the power grid, we believe Hayden Data Systems is part of the energy future. Numerous successful deployments of our sensor systems show that they can increase overall electric grid stability and reliability. They also optimize maintenance planning and emergency response. This leads to reduced energy costs to consumers and a safer, more resilient energy grid.

With this technology, we’re well on our way to the ultimate smart grid.