A drone travels 10 kilometers non-stop to monitor the power lines over the forests of Lleida

Endesa will invest 8.1 million euros in 2026 to prevent fires in Lleida, 61% more than in 2025. The plan reinforces the surveillance of overhead lines, which cross wooded areas, through clearing, helicopter inspection, and new technologies.

29 of may of 2026 at 18:06h
A drone travels 10 kilometers non-stop to monitor the power lines over the forests of Lleida
A drone travels 10 kilometers non-stop to monitor the power lines over the forests of Lleida

Endesa will allocate 8.1 million euros to the regions of Lleida in the 2026 forest fire prevention campaign. The figure represents a 61% increase compared to 2025 and positions the demarcation as the one with the largest investment increase within the company's plan in Catalonia.

The reinforcement is being carried out on a network where more than half of the Catalan grid is aerial and passes through wooded or vegetated areas. In this context, Lleida will concentrate a significant part of a device that the company presented on Wednesday in Sant Joan de Vilatorrada, in Bages, with a total budget of 38 million euros for all of Catalonia.

Investment in Lleida Rises 61% and Leads the Increase in Catalonia

The 2026 campaign is based on three lines of work. The first involves the cleaning and maintenance of the forest mass located around the electrical grid, a key point in regions with large rural and forest areas.

The second line focuses on aerial inspection. Endesa will use helicopters to perform thermography, high-definition recording, and visual inspections, with the aim of detecting incidents and reviewing the condition of the facilities before the months of highest risk.

The use of new technologies and drones with AI is added to this deployment to expand supervision capacity. The third pillar of the plan consists of exhaustive reviews of all grid facilities.

New Drones Reach 10 Kilometers in a Single Flight

Among the campaign's innovations are long-range drones developed by FuVeX. They are authorized to operate at distances of up to 10 kilometers, a capacity that multiplies the range of conventional drones by twenty.

This margin allows for covering large sections of the grid in a single flight and obtaining high-resolution geospatial information. The company incorporates this tool within a surveillance system that also includes thermal cameras, R&D devices, and felling and pruning brigades.

These brigades also include teams with exoskeletons, designed to support on-site tasks. The operation is applied to a network of 100,058 kilometers in Catalonia.

Of this total, 53,030 kilometers are aerial lines. The company places this volume at 53% of its entire network in Catalonia, with routes that run through wooded or vegetated areas and require periodic maintenance and surveillance work.

The presentation of the plan took place on Wednesday in the municipal district of Sant Joan de Vilatorrada, in Bages, and the global investment planned by Endesa for the 2026 forest fire prevention campaign in Catalonia amounts to 38 million euros.

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