OREANDA-NEWS. September 15, 2011. On 14 September in Moscow IDGC Holding and Russian Helicopters entered into an Agreement of Cooperation. The document was signed by Nikolay Shvets, Director General of IDGC Holding, and Dmitry Petrov, Director General of Russian Helicopters, JSC.

The agreement is meant to meet JSC IDGC Holding needs in helicopters and to widen the range, modifications and variants of operating the helicopters produced by Russian Helicopters companies and used under order of electricity distribution grid complex engineers.

According to Nikolay Shvets, air patrol operations are becoming a more and more popular instrument among electricity distribution grid companies. “JSC IDGC Holding controls over 2 million kilometres of power transmission lines (which equals 51 times the length of the Equator) with most part of the transmission lines set in difficult to access places. In case some technological breakdowns occur the traditional ground patrolling in order to find the damages could become an inexcusably long process”, underlined Nikolay Shvets. “Improving the situational awareness about the current state of the power grid is one of the key points in the policy of IDGC Holding. This helps to optimize repair plans and accident recovery works. Broadening the helicopter usage will allow Russian power engineers not only to conduct aerial monitoring but also immediately send accident recovery teams to the points where power lines are disrupted. It also allows to use state-of-the-art innovation technologies such as laser scanning for technological certification of power transmission lines”.

CEO of Russian Helicopters Dmitry Petrov said: “The cooperation with JSC IDGC Holding is an important stage for us in fulfilling our strategic tasks to provide the Russian economy with modern helicopters. I’m sure that using Russian-produced geographically and climate-specific helicopters will help IDGC to enhance power lines monitoring effectiveness and allow completing the tasks in emergency situations immediately”.