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CS-03B· Manufacturer / operatorQuadruped
National Grid: inspecting an energized valve hall
The thyristor valve hall could only be inspected during the annual outage; with Spot, visual and thermal inspection became twice-monthly, without shutting down the station.
Last reviewed: 2026-11 · Methodology & sources →
Fact sheet
- Organization
- National Grid
- Sector
- Energy
- Location
- Sandy Pond HVDC converter station, near Boston (US)
- Environment
- Industrial plant
- Stage
- Commercial
- First public deployment
- 2021
- Autonomy (editorial classification)
- L3 · Conditional autonomy
- Coordination (editorial classification)
- Standalone
Published payback
Not published
01The challenge
- People cannot enter the valve hall while it is operating, so inspections were limited to a single annual outage, with risk of unplanned downtime.[Boston Dynamics, 2022][Renewable Energy World, 2021]
- The hall is a five-storey building, and the robot had to tolerate the electric field and keep safety distances.[Renewable Energy World, 2021]
02The solution
- Hardware
- Boston Dynamics Spot.[National Grid][Renewable Energy World, 2021]
- Perception
- Optical zoom camera and infrared thermal camera to detect hot spots and leaks.[Renewable Energy World, 2021]
- Navigation
- After extensive testing, the robot operates with limits: no closer than 9 ft (≈2.7 m) to energized equipment and 10 in to walls.[Renewable Energy World, 2021]
- Coordination
- Operators stay outside the hall; by April 2022 they were running automated hot-spot inspections.[Boston Dynamics, 2022]
03Published KPIs
Figures as communicated, with their context and source. “Not published” means no public figure exists — a gap to close in a pilot.
| KPI | Value | Context | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valve-hall inspection frequencybefore: annual outage only | Twice-monthly | before: annual outage only | [Boston Dynamics, 2022] |
| Outage required to inspectbefore: yes | No | before: yes | [Renewable Energy World, 2021] |
| Documented findingfound on a manual mission; planned repair | Small oil leak on a bushing | found on a manual mission; planned repair | [Boston Dynamics, 2022] |
| Avoided cost / downtime hours | Not published | — | — |
04Lessons
Integration & operations
- Two days of vendor training in early 2022 were enough for operators to use the robot for automated inspections by April.[Boston Dynamics, 2022]
Maintenance & limits
- The robot's tolerance to the electromagnetic field was validated before it entered the hall.[Renewable Energy World, 2021]
Scaling
- Routine scans have so far found little out of the ordinary: the value lies in frequency and in removing the outage, not in a spectacular finding.[Boston Dynamics, 2022]