Hey HN! We’re Hayden, Ronan, Avi, and Warren of Voltair (YC W26), building weatherized, hybrid-fixed drones for power utility inspections. Our drones, capable of flying over 70 miles on a single charge, are designed to address critical infrastructure vulnerabilities. The U.S. has 7 million miles of aging power lines, with 50% relying on transformers over 30 years old—prone to failures that risk wildfires like last year’s Palisades Fire.

Traditional inspection methods, including helicopters ($25k per launch) and foot patrols (50-150 poles inspected daily), are inefficient. Utilities like Georgia Power saved 60% on costs using drones, while Xcel found drones detected 60% more defects. However, FAA regulations and battery limitations have stalled adoption. Competitors like Skydio charge $250,000/box for drone-in-a-box systems with limited concurrency and range.

Our initial approach—harvesting power from power lines—failed due to insufficient current on distribution lines. Now, we’re deploying ultra-rugged fixed-wing drones that recharge inductively at low-cost charging pads ($2k each). These drones operate autonomously, hopping between pads to inspect thousands of poles. Data is offloaded via high-speed Wi-Fi to charging stations, which sync with cloud servers using Starlink, LTE, or fiber.

With our first major contract secured and pilots scheduled for mid-April, we’re offering inspection as a service—charging per pole or tower. While utilities are our focus, applications in telecom, agriculture, and search-and-rescue excite us. We explicitly reject surveillance use cases, citing risks like government overreach (e.g., Sonoma County’s landowner spying). Our goal: safer, scalable infrastructure monitoring without compromising privacy.