Across India’s vast power grid, thousands of kilometers of transmission lines stretch over farmland, forests, and fast-growing urban zones. Monitoring them, spotting what’s out of place, where risks are rising, or when critical equipment is faltering, is a logistical and financial nightmare for utilities. And when something goes wrong, it’s not just the lights that go out. It’s livelihoods, safety, and trust.

 

Manual inspections are slow, expensive, and often miss the warning signs. Drone surveys help, but they’re hard to scale. What the grid needs is real-time visibility, without the overhead.

 

That’s the problem Aumsat is solving. With satellites.

 

Founded by Riddhish Soni in 2019, Aumsat uses AI-powered satellite imagery to provide high-precision energy analytics for utilities. From identifying vegetation intrusion and soil erosion to detecting damaged insulators and leaning poles, they’re giving discoms a clearer, more comprehensive view of their grid at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.

 

Instead of sending trucks or drones across hundreds of kilometers, Aumsat’s platform taps into a rich stream of satellite data, layering it with proprietary AI models to flag potential risks before they escalate. Vegetation growing too close to a line? Flagged. A rusted connector spotted on a substation? Marked. A pole leaning dangerously off-axis in a remote district? Highlighted for immediate action.

 

 

And the economics are hard to ignore. In a recent pilot across 16 districts serving 6.4 million consumers, Aumsat helped reduce inspection costs by over 75%, translating to ₹1 crore in annual savings for just 50 km of coverage. Extrapolated across Telangana’s 1800 km of power lines, that’s a potential ₹37 crore in savings per year.

 

 

Aumsat’s dashboard acts as a digital control room, giving utilities real-time visibility over asset health, vegetation risk, fire hazards, and encroachments, all mapped and prioritized. During the pilot, they flagged 120 vegetation intrusions and 29 asset issues that would’ve otherwise gone undetected or caught too late.

 

Their structural analysis layer goes deeper: identifying punctured insulators, rusted joints, or risky jumper wires, all without setting foot in the field.

 

More than just a monitoring tool, Aumsat positions itself as a climate-aligned intelligence partner—reducing waste, improving system resilience, and helping utilities modernize with minimal disruption.

 

In a sector where downtime costs lakhs and public trust hangs by a wire, smarter surveillance isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a necessity. And with satellite tech becoming more accessible, Aumsat is proving that scalable energy intelligence doesn’t need to come with sky-high costs.

 

They’re not just mapping assets. They’re mapping the future of the grid.