Southern Company has flown aircraft in more places than many operators can imagine – including inside a nuclear power plant. One of America’s largest gas and electricity providers, the Atlanta-based company, through its subsidiaries, flies fixed-wing airplanes, helicopters and a fleet of over 200 drones.
Company-wide, more than 190 different technicians have become Part 107 unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) pilots in a variety of roles.
“We equip linemen, troublemen, engineers, radiological inspectors, corporate security folks and others with drones – anyone who works on our system,” said Cody Michaux, UAS pilot and innovation lead. “It’s another tool in their toolbox, so they don’t have to climb poles or transmission towers. It’s about improving safety. That’s been the No. 1 goal from the beginning.”
Using drones also makes Southern Company’s field teams more efficient, getting the lights back on faster after an outage, saving time, cutting costs, reducing emissions and creating a wealth of data to make the grid even more resilient.
“It’s another tool in their toolbox, so they don’t have to climb poles or transmission towers. It’s really about improving safety. That’s been the No. 1 goal from the beginning.”
Cody Michaux, UAS Pilot and Innovation Lead
UAS technology and training is managed by Aerial Services, led by the company’s Part 91 aviation team. “Our department exists to support the larger company, with strategies for leveraging this technology,” said Kevin Brown, general manager of system aviation operations. “We partner with them to understand their needs, and find a way to execute on that using aviation.”
Aerial Services includes 48 pilots, maintenance technicians, flight coordinators and managers, based at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport (PDK). While Southern Company has operated a traditional Part 91 flight department since the 1960s, the UAS program began in 2014.
Southern Company was the first utility to apply for FAA's Section 333 exemption, before imple- mentation of Part 107 in 2016.
Drones in the Field
That year, the company’s R&D division asked the flight department to look into drones for inspecting the company’s power infrastructure.
“At the time, the FAA Section 333 exemption required a pilot’s license to operate a drone commercially. It was really as simple as: ‘Hey, we’ve got some pilots out there [in the aviation department], can you help us,’” recalled Harry Nuttall, director of Aerial Services.
Southern Company was the first utility to apply for a Section 333 exemption, and when the FAA implemented Part 107 in late 2016, allowing commercial operation of drones with a written exam, the aviation department was the obvious choice to oversee the UAS program.
“In the early days, we worked with our transmission linemen to teach them the aviation side and to teach us everything we needed to know about the power grid,” said Dean Barefield, UAS program manager. “The program puts the technology in the hands of the subject matter experts. They know what we need to solve for.”
The company’s first drone deployment was in 2017, after Hurricane Harvey disrupted power across Texas. “Since then, drones have played a part in every major storm recovery,” said Barefield.
And not just with inspections. During the 2018 recovery from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, two “bull gang” crews used a drone to pull rope for a conductor, ultimately pulling a total of 72,000 feet of rope.
“We’re kind of a blended family here, with a variety of different skill sets.”
Harry Nuttall, Director of Aerial Services
A Blended Family
Linemen are used to working independently. They get a call and drive out to inspect a transmission tower or pole. The company’s self-dispatch model for UAS operations was made for that flexibility.
“Our subject matter experts are out in the field,” said Nuttall. “The way we started with drones gave them a lot of freedom. As we’ve built a more formal program, we needed more visibility into where all our folks are flying drones, more oversight, vetting and training, to ensure safety and compliance. But we don’t want to make their job more complicated, it’s a delicate balance.”
UAS deployments include flying inside huge boilers to perform inspections that otherwise would be much more challenging.
About nine of the Aerial Services team are UAS pilots, a mix of U.S. military veterans, former Part 91 pilots and graduates of UAS programs at Embry-Riddle or other aviation schools – working alongside the traditional flight department roles. “We’re kind of a blended family here, with a variety of different skill sets,” said Nuttall.
Their team evaluates new drone models for different missions and provides training to the hundreds of non-aviation UAS pilots across the company.
“Manned aviation in the U.S. has proven ways to manage risk: safety management systems, and so on. We are taking that and translating it over to UAS applications. ”
Kevin Brown, General Manager of System Aviation Operations
“Our part is bringing aviation to the table. We’re here to create the framework for new UAS applications. Leveraging traditional aviation methodologies to innovate,” said Brown. “Manned aviation in the U.S. has proven ways to manage risk, safety management systems and so on. We are taking that and translating it over to UAS applications.”
Working together with Southern Company’s R&D division, and a variety of end users within the company, Aerial Services develops new use cases for drones, including sourcing new technology, writing the operating procedures, trying it out in the field and developing training for new UAS deployments.
“When you think about all the complex airspace our infrastructure runs through, there’s a myriad of rules and other issues around populations you can fly over,” said Nuttall. “I mean, there’s power lines everywhere, we’re in Class A, B, C, D – every class of airspace. And we fly our airplanes in that environment daily, we know it. So, we work with our stakeholders to implement their ideas, while meeting all the requirements and regulations.”
“These things can go inside a boiler and perform inspections beyond visual line of sight, going five stories up from where the pilot is standing. It saves a lot of time and money, and it’s much safer for our inspection teams.”
Dean Barefield, UAS Program Manager
Innovating With Aviation
One of the most cutting-edge uses the Aerial Services team has developed is for the GPS-denied environment, such as inside a power plant. Aerial Services pilots use an Elios 3 drone made by UAS manufacturer Flyability that performs 3D-mapping of its environment using light detection and ranging, or LIDAR.
“These things can go inside a boiler, and perform inspections beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), going five stories up from where the pilot is standing,” said Barefield. “It saves a lot of time and money, and it’s much safer for our inspection teams.”
“It would have taken weeks just to build the scaffolding, but with a drone you can do it in minutes.”
Angelica Baker, UAS Pilot
Southern Company has even outfitted Elios drones with radiological sensors to measure dosage throughout its Vogtle nuclear power plant – an essential safety procedure that normally means building scaffolding in nearly every room of the plant.
“It would have taken weeks just to build the scaffolding, but with a drone you can do it in minutes,” said UAS Pilot Angelica Baker. “You can send it into a confined space, send it many stories up. And we don’t have to put a person in that environment.”
Using drones not only improves safety, but also sustainability. As of January 2025, Southern has deployed five Skydio Docks with plans to install 10 more through the year. “The drone lives inside the dock, takes off from it, returns to it,” said Brown, “and our pilots can fly it remotely. So, you can do security surveillance; you can look at switches; it can be outfitted with thermal sensors that can tell us when a solar panel is out. And that saves a truck roll, reducing emissions, versus having to send someone out to look at it manually.”
Drones Provide Southern Company With Valuable Data
Southern Company Aerial Services not only flies drones, their team at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport (PDK) also creates digital products for internal users within the company.
“How we ingest the data, where we store it, access it… Data is a big deal,” said Harry Nuttall, director of Aerial Services.
In the early days, Aerial Services pilots would fly a drone for an hour and provide internal stakeholders with a hard drive of raw, 4K video. But fully leveraging the data required visualization tools. “So, we partnered with folks in our technology division to deliver data tools that are more useful,” Nuttall said.
As Kevin Brown, general manager of system aviation operations, likes to say, “The reason we fly these things is they have advanced sensors. They’re collecting aerial intelligence. The goal is to make an informed decision. And that requires a level of analytics.”
Brown is leading construction of a new Aerial Operations Center at Southern Company’s hangar that will liaise with the utility’s other control centers for grid operations, security, etc. They’re building a geographic “airspace reservation system,” based on a hexagonal grid for the entire U.S., to deconflict drone operations from manned aircraft flights, also working with the FAA on NOTAMs and temporary authorizations during storm recovery.
“This is what an aviation organization looks like when it integrates with the business,” said Nuttall. “We’re calling it an aerial data strategy.”
Snapshot: Southern Company Aerial Services
Aircraft: More than 200 drones of about half a dozen makes and models, two helicopters and a traditional fixed-wing fleet
Base: Headquartered at Atlanta’s DeKalb-Peachtree Airport (PDK)
Personnel: Aerial Services includes 48 aviation professionals, including nine full-time UAS pilots and two program managers. Southern Company has about 190 UAS pilots among its linemen and other technicians.
International Business Aviation Council Ltd.
