ESB Appoints Cyberhawk to Strengthen Grid Resilience Following Major Storms
Irish Utility Accelerates Storm Recovery with Scalable Drone Inspections and iHawk Visual Data Management Platform
EDINBURGH, Scotland, Sept. 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Cyberhawk™, a global leader in drone-based asset inspection and visual data management, is pleased to report on its successful support of the Electricity Supply Board's (ESB) Winter Resilience Program in Ireland. This initiative, launched in response to the widespread damage caused by severe storms, demonstrates the impact of scalable drone operations combined with Cyberhawk's proprietary iHawk™ cloud-based platform.
ESB, Ireland's national electrical utility, selected Cyberhawk under a five-year agreement to perform critical inspections across its transmission and distribution network. While past efforts focused on high-voltage transmission infrastructure, the collaboration expanded to distribution networks following severe damage caused by back-to-back storms Darragh and Eowyn. These storms, in December 2024 and January 2025 respectively, resulted in power outages impacting more than 700,000 homes, businesses, and farms throughout Ireland, as well as significant damage to civil infrastructure.
In a matter of days, Cyberhawk deployed drone teams across more than 180km (112 miles) of ESB's distribution network, specifically around over 1,000 highly dense forested sections. Using iHawk, ESB was able to rapidly and intuitively visualise and catalogue storm damage, including fallen trees and damaged assets, enabling rapid debris clearance and targeted maintenance planning. The platform also provided valuable reporting for vegetation encroachment issues, supporting proactive management strategies to strengthen resilience ahead of future storms.
"Speed and scale were critical in our response to the storm damage," noted Elaine Hannan, Overhead Lines Asset Manager, ESB Networks. "Cyberhawk's combination of expert field operations and its iHawk platform allowed us to quickly understand the condition of our network. iHawk provided us with a new level of network visibility and remote situational awareness, and helped bridge the gap between data collection, decision-making, and action, delivering immediate value to our teams. We look forward to exploring further use cases for this approach to proactively address potential problems and speed response times during future weather events."
ESB's Winter Resilience Program is part of its broader commitment to improving sustainability, safety, and reliability for its two million customers. "ESB's openness to innovation and collaboration enabled us to deliver real, measurable benefits," said Patrick Saracco, Cyberhawk's Senior Vice President EMEA. "This program demonstrates the power of combining aerial intelligence with actionable analytics, and we're honored to play a role in helping strengthen the resilience of Ireland's energy infrastructure against extreme weather events."
About Cyberhawk
Founded in 2008, Cyberhawk™ is the world leader in visual data management, seamlessly combining drone-based inspection and survey data with its software solution, iHawk™. As an industry pioneer, Cyberhawk conducts 500,000 inspections and surveys each year and has completed over 35 world firsts since its inception, operating worldwide in more than 40 countries. Made up of a highly skilled team of energy sector veterans, world-class pilots, inspection engineers and in-house software developers, Cyberhawk offers a true end-to-end visual inspection, survey and management solution for the energy, oil and gas and capital projects sectors.
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