A Changing Landscape for Utilities

Asset inspection and infrastructure maintenance have long been among the biggest challenges and expenses for utilities. Traditional survey methods are costly, time-consuming, and often inefficient.

Artificial intelligence presents a transformative opportunity for the utilities sector by offering a more efficient and cost-effective approach to managing inspection and maintenance. Companies that oversee assets across large areas, whether in utilities or other sectors, stand to benefit greatly from this technology shift.

Highlighter AI, developed by machine learning company Silverpond, is the ideal partner for utilities companies in their asset management efforts. It combines powerful machine learning with an intuitive, user-friendly platform to automate asset inspections, and streamline infrastructure management scale. Highlighter has demonstrated impressive results in its collaboration with Energy Queensland.

Industry Challenges & Context

Historically, utilities companies have relied on manual, in-person inspections of powerlines and poles. Field crews often cover many kilometres on foot, inspecting vegetation and infrastructure; an approach that quickly becomes impractical for large-scale networks.

Even when feasible, manual inspections carry trade-offs. Limited time and personnel mean inspections are prioritised based on perceived urgency, such as areas with known vegetation issues or previously flagged faults. This subjective approach is inconsistent and prone to error.

The introduction of helicopter and drone-based inspections, using high-resolution cameras, improves coverage but remains labour-intensive and expensive. This process still requires analysts to sift through imagery manually, limiting scalability.

The Future is Now

Technology and AI is rapidly changing the landscape. Forward-thinking companies are embracing modern tools that dramatically enhance inspection efficiency.

Recent innovations include:

• Advanced helicopter sensors, from ultra-high-definition cameras to thermal and LiDAR imaging. While effective, payload constraints often require trade-offs in what equipment can be used in a single flight.
• Drones (UAVs) equipped with high-performance cameras, which enhance the efficiency of ground crews by expanding coverage and improving data quality.

With these tools, companies can collect massive volumes of high-quality data quickly. But this shift creates a new challenge: how to process and extract value from that data efficiently. Manual analysis can’t keep pace with the volume. AI and machine learning offer the solution.

In the world of energy infrastructure, where aging assets and environmental risks are growing, intelligent automation is essential.

Introducing Highlighter

Highlighter is a next generation AI platform purpose-built for organisations across a range of sectors, including utilities, to simplify data assessment and asset management.

Its machine learning models detect, classify, and explain within a single, centralised platform. By surfacing details human inspectors might otherwise miss, Highlighter enables human–AI collaboration to boost both data accuracy and efficiency.

Seamless Integration and Ease of Use

Highlighter features a low-code, intuitive interface that requires no technical background. It integrates smoothly into existing enterprise workflows, helping organisations scale without disruption.

Comprehensive Perception for the Modern Utility

Utility companies generate vast amounts of perception data, including videos, images, sensor readings, and documents. Highlighter, the world’s first Enterprise Perception System (EPS), consolidates all this into one platform, enabling better pattern recognition, risk detection, and intervention planning.

In the context of electricity networks, Highlighter automates the analysis of pole and wire infrastructure, using machine learning to identify components and defects. AI performs initial triage, flagging issues before human inspectors review them, streamlining maintenance workflows and prioritising urgent repairs.

Real-World Impact: Safer, Smarter Infrastructure

Highlighter delivers transformative benefits:

• Improved workflows: Inspections become more efficient and focused.
• Enhanced safety: Early risk detection helps prevent catastrophic events like bushfires.
• Reduced manpower needs: Automation eases pressure on field teams.
• Better asset lifecycle management: Clearer insights into asset condition support long-term planning.
• Superior user experience: Its intuitive design means quicker onboarding and more time spent on insight, not interfaces.

One System, Endless Visibility

Highlighter centralises perception and analysis. It enables utility operators to manage vast infrastructure networks with clarity and foresight, combining AI scalability with human expertise.

Energy Queensland

Highlighter has partnered with Energy Queensland, one of Australia’s largest utility companies, to help monitor and manage its massive 210,000km network.

Faced with the challenge of maintaining infrastructure over a landmass more than twice the size of Texas, Energy Queensland needed an AI-powered platform capable of recognising and assessing diverse assets, detecting faults at scale, and integrating custom digital workflows.

Highlighter AI performs this task with ease, seamlessly processing a wide variety of media types both at the macro and micro level, from high-resolution drone footage and satellite images to close-up inspections. Whether assessing sweeping landscapes for vegetation encroachment or zooming in on corrosion in individual components, Highlighter enables rapid, large-scale analysis that traditional methods can’t match. Its open and interoperable architecture allows the integration of proprietary and third-party AI models, giving Energy Queensland a unified and scalable system for asset intelligence.

Some key outcomes achieved through Energy Queensland’s use of Highlighter AI include:

• Improved defect detection and network safety:
  
  • Highlighter identified previously undetected asset defects during re-inspection, allowing Energy Queensland to proactively address potential failures.
  • Risk managers reported improved overall visibility and control using the same resources.
• Human–AI collaboration built trust and confidence:
  
  • The “human-in-the-loop” approach proved more effective than either human or AI inspection alone.
  • Over 60 local area experts reviewed AI assessments and disagreed with fewer than 1.5% of results. Following this validation, AI-assisted inspections were fully adopted across operations.
• Enhanced usability and operational resilience:
  
  • Custom workflows and embedded standards (taxonomies, defect classifications, and visual examples) made the system intuitive for inspectors and accelerated adoption.
  • Highlighter supported uninterrupted inspections through challenges such as severe weather, supply-chain disruptions, and evolving drone regulations.
• Continuous improvement and scalability:
  
  • Success in aerial inspection programs is now expanding into LIDAR and ground-based initiatives.
  • Highlighter’s AI-assisted processes are informing broader digital transformation efforts across Energy Queensland’s operations, from planning to predictive forecasting.

Automating the Way Forward

The utilities sector is on the brink of a digital revolution. As companies digitise, the data from drones, sensors, and IoT devices becomes a rich source for advanced analytics. Over time, AI models will grow more predictive as they ingest historical data.

Drone technology is evolving too. Though current regulations limit drone use to line-of-sight, this is expected to change. Autonomous drones will soon fly pre-programmed routes between charging stations, enabling continuous infrastructure surveillance. The result: more frequent inspections, better coverage, and richer data for decision-making.

These advances will also be integrated with complementary datasets like satellite imagery, offering a layered view of grid conditions—from wide-area monitoring to detailed ground-level insights.

Inspection data will increasingly intersect with fault detection, voltage monitoring, and power quality tools, ushering in predictive maintenance technologies. For wildfire-prone or aging grid networks, this kind of foresight is vital.

See What's Next with Highlighter

As the pressure mounts for utilities companies to modernise, AI is no longer a distant promise; it’s a present-day imperative. Highlighter AI is redefining what’s possible in enterprise operations by offering a powerful, intuitive and scalable solution for asset inspection and infrastructure intelligence. By automating analysis, supporting human decision-making, and improving operational agility, Highlighter empowers organisations to act faster, smarter, and safer.

For industry leaders ready to harness this potential, now is the time to explore. Highlighter offers tailored consultations and live demos to help companies understand its impact and see the results for themselves.

Contact Highlighter today to start transforming your operations. See what’s next at highlighter.ai.

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The nerve-centre that's operations ready. From perception software to enterprise insight, and every detail in between, Highlighter.ai by Silverpond is the nerve centre for perception data. With the only machine learning toolkit that’s operations ready, Highlighter is the one place where humans and AI agents collaborate in real time. Highlighter is the perception system for Enterprise - simply see what’s next.

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