Ondas subsidiary Cyberhawk has secured a new three-year agreement with SSE's SSEN Transmission and SSEN Distribution to provide specialist drone inspection and surveying across UK electricity networks.
What the agreement covers
The programme will cover thousands of kilometres of critical electricity infrastructure and includes offshore wind-turbine inspection. Cyberhawk has already supported SSE for more than a decade, so the announcement represents an expansion of an established operating relationship rather than a first demonstration flight.
The agreement includes an option to extend for a further two years. That structure gives the utility a longer path to standardise data collection and maintenance planning while retaining an opportunity to review performance, cost and changing network requirements before the full term is complete.
Why inspection is a strong drone use case
Power lines, substations and turbines are distributed over large areas and often sit in difficult terrain. Drones can collect close visual and thermal data without sending a crew to every structure or shutting down an asset for a long inspection window.
The business value comes from the whole data chain. A flight is only useful if the imagery is consistent, defects can be prioritised and the resulting work order reaches the maintenance team. Repeated operations also create a historical record that can show whether a crack, corrosion point or vegetation issue is changing.
The role of BVLOS permissions
Cyberhawk says it holds active beyond-visual-line-of-sight permissions in the UK and US. That matters for network-scale work because an operator cannot economically walk or drive alongside every aircraft for long linear routes and offshore assets.
BVLOS capability still depends on airspace coordination, contingency procedures, reliable communications and a risk assessment matched to the route. The commercial agreement therefore reflects regulatory maturity as well as aircraft and camera capability.
Infrastructure drones are becoming repeatable operations
The Cyberhawk agreement shows the mature stage of utility inspection: the focus is shifting from proving that a drone can capture images to running a dependable, repeatable service that feeds directly into asset management.
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