AEP Ohio turns drone inspections into operational intelligence with Skydio + Levitas AI

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AEP Ohio turns drone inspections into operational intelligence with Skydio + Levitas AI

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AEP Ohio — one of seven operating companies within American Electric Power, which spans 4,000 miles of transmission, 29 GW of generation, and operations in 11 states — piloted drone inspections across approximately 4% of its distribution system in 2025. The program collected 400,000–500,000 aerial images and identified 150+ Tier-1 issues (predominantly thermal anomalies and limbs on lines), replacing ground-based inspections that previously captured only pictures of known issues. Project manager Jake Reed, who leads AEP Ohio's drone program supporting inspections, reliability assessments, and storm response, framed the work in a January 2026 "Flight to Insight" webinar sponsored by Skydio. Levitas CEO Chris Nielsen: "We build computer vision AI models and a delivery platform that helps our customers identify defects on their grid. We are fully integrated into the Skydio cloud, which means that you can get insights immediately while the drone is still in the air." The context is operational scale. AEP Ohio serves 1.5 million customers across 10,000 square miles and 47,000 distribution line miles. Between October 2023 and October 2024, the utility recorded tens of thousands of power interruptions. A single inspector previously spent 500+ hours reviewing the year's drone imagery, so the data backlog — not the flying itself — became the limiting factor. The evolution has moved from ground-based inspections capturing pictures of known issues to autonomous drone capture that records every asset on a defined shot sheet, with AI performing first-pass triage. Skydio is the leading US-based autonomous drone manufacturer with dock systems for remote, repeatable operations. Levitas layers computer-vision models onto the capture pipeline with deep Skydio integration. On the technical architecture: Skydio's autonomous drones (X10 platform and dock systems) perform the capture. Levitas AI models run in-flight for real-time flagging and post-flight for higher-precision analysis. Capabilities include thermal anomaly detection, damage classification with severity scoring, corrosion detection, and analog gauge reading. The Skydio + Levitas partnership is designed so utility users do not manage separate vendor integrations or NDAs. Operational results from the 2025 pilot: 4% of the distribution system inspected, 400,000–500,000 aerial images, 150+ Tier-1 issues identified, and a single inspector's 500+ hours of manual review surfaced as the next bottleneck. Use cases extend to PSPS restoration and post-storm response. Skydio senior director of energy strategy Christina Park (ex-New York Power Authority) noted that US-based design, manufacturing, and assembly (headquarters and production roughly 15 minutes apart) matters for utility security and data residency. The deployment pattern is replicable across US investor-owned utilities, cooperatives, and municipal utilities, positioning drone + AI inspection as an embedded workflow rather than a proof of concept.