High Resolution & Accurate

Aerial Imagery for Electric Utilities

Imagery and elevation models to support vegetation management, network asset inspection, disaster response, and grid maintenance planning.

Request a Demo

High Resolution & Accurate

Aerial Imagery for Electric Utilities

Imagery and elevation models to support vegetation management, asset inspection, disaster response, and grid and maintenance planning.

Request a Demo

Urban & rural networks

7.5-15cm imagery

Digital surface models

AI optimized

How Vexcel Helps Utilities Companies

Managing hundreds of thousands of miles of transmission and distribution infrastructure requires visibility that traditional methods alone can’t deliver. Wildfire liability is intensifying. NERC compliance scrutiny is tightening. And your teams need a geo foundation that feeds asset management, analytics, and storm response simultaneously.

Vexcel provides a complete data stack engineered for utilities: high-resolution imagery, elevation models, and multispectral data across your entire service territory—all aligned, all current, one vendor. This becomes your foundation for vegetation risk management, timestamped evidence for compliance documentation, rapid damage assessment after major storms, asset prioritization, and AI-driven operations.

See Your Entire Utilities Network

Our aerial imagery library covers your whole network, from city substations to rural transmission corridors. With ongoing collection programs and a historical imagery library, you can review assets across your service territory and compare imagery over time to identify changes.

Vexcel’s imagery is matched to ground control points and produced to ASPRS standards, delivering highly accurate, timestamped imagery that supports engineering, compliance, and regulatory reporting.

Oblique image of powerlines in Commack, NY

DSM of electric utilities in Madison Heights, VA

Top-down ortho image of electric utilities in Madison Heights VA

DSMOrtho

Measure What Matters: Height, Clearance, Risk

Vegetation height. Asset elevation. Terrain exposure. Vexcel’s Digital Surface Model (DSM) gives you the elevation data to better understand your network.

Captured alongside our ortho and multispectral imagery, Vexcel’s DSM delivers accurate elevation data that aligns directly with what you see on the ground. It’s a cost-effective way to augment—or, in some cases, replace—LiDAR collections while providing territory-wide coverage and ongoing updates.

See Infrastructure from Every Angle

Oblique views at 45-degree angles let your teams visually inspect poles, substations, and transmission corridors from multiple directions.

You can remotely measure pole heights, assess equipment and attachments, evaluate vegetation proximity, and see surrounding conditions.

From north, east, south, and west views, your GIS and engineering teams see what’s actually there and make confident decisions about condition, maintenance priorities, and investment needs.

Oblique image of powerlines in Redmond, WA

See Infrastructure from Every Angle

Oblique views at 45-degree angles let your teams visually inspect poles, substations, and transmission corridors from multiple directions.

You can remotely measure pole heights, assess equipment and attachments, evaluate vegetation proximity, and see surrounding conditions.

From north, east, south, and west views, your GIS and engineering teams see what’s actually there and make confident decisions about condition, maintenance priorities, and investment needs.

See Infrastructure from Every Angle

Oblique views at 45-degree angles let your teams visually inspect poles, substations, and transmission corridors from multiple directions.

You can remotely measure pole heights, assess equipment and attachments, evaluate vegetation proximity, and see surrounding conditions.

From north, east, south, and west views, your GIS and engineering teams see what’s actually there and make confident decisions about condition, maintenance priorities, and investment needs.

See Infrastructure from Every Angle

Oblique views at 45-degree angles let your teams visually inspect poles, substations, and transmission corridors from multiple directions.

You can remotely measure pole heights, assess equipment and attachments, evaluate vegetation proximity, and see surrounding conditions.

From north, east, south, and west views, your GIS and engineering teams see what’s actually there and make confident decisions about condition, maintenance priorities, and investment needs.

North East South West

Multispectral image of electric utilities in Madison Heights

Top-down ortho image of electric utilities in Madison Heights

CIRRGB

Identify Vegetation Risk

Standard aerial RGB imagery shows you where vegetation is. Multispectral imagery helps reveal which vegetation poses the greatest risk and why.

Vexcel’s color-infrared (CIR) imagery makes it easy to distinguish healthy, stressed, and dying trees, helping you identify vegetation risks and detect encroachment into utility corridors and clearance zones.

AI for Electric Utilities

Search your entire network in seconds. Vexcel Intelligence lets you search Vexcel’s multi-modal data using natural language.

Ask questions like:

Find electric utility poles in Austin, Texas
Show new construction near utility infrastructure
Find trees encroaching on utility corridors

Search in Vexcel Studio or bring the same real-world intelligence into AI apps like Claude and ChatGPT.

Power line damage after a tornado in Clarksville, TN

Assess Damage and Plan Recovery

After a major hurricane, wildfire, or tornado, it can take days to understand the full extent of the impact across your service territory.

Vexcel’s Gray Sky program captures high-resolution aerial imagery after major catastrophic events, showing the actual extent of damage and affected infrastructure.

Combined with pre-disaster baseline imagery, you can quickly compare before-and-after conditions to assess impacts, document damage, and support recovery planning.

Utilities Stories

Oblique aerial image of power lines in Glenmont, NY, published by Vexcel.

Spot the Spark Before it Starts

February 5, 2026

High-res Imagery & DSM for Utilities Vegetation Management

May 5, 2025

Evaluating DSM and its Origin Source: LiDAR or Photogrammetry

March 10, 2025

View All Stories

FAQs about Vexcel for Utilities

Q: Why use Vexcel aerial imagery instead of satellite or drone imagery for utility operations?

Vexcel aerial imagery provides up to 16× more pixel detail than the highest-resolution commercial satellite imagery, giving utilities the clarity needed to inspect assets, monitor vegetation, and support engineering, asset management, and GIS workflows.

Unlike drone programs, Vexcel covers entire utility service territories with consistent imagery collected on an ongoing basis, eliminating the need to coordinate thousands of individual drone flights.

Utilities also gain access to a historical imagery library to compare conditions over time, identify changes across their network, and make more informed maintenance and planning decisions.

Q: What utility service areas does Vexcel cover?

Vexcel runs the world’s largest aerial imagery program, with ongoing collections across urban and rural areas throughout the contiguous United States and Western Europe, plus cities in more than 45 countries and territories worldwide.

Visit our Coverage pages to explore available imagery in your area: https://vexceldata.com/countries/

If your project requires imagery or data outside Vexcel’s standard collection program, or on a specific timeline, Vexcel Fleet can help. Through our network of Vexcel-operated aircraft and trusted collection partners, we coordinate bespoke aerial imagery collections to meet your requirements. Utility companies supplement Vexcel’s ongoing imagery program with project-specific collections when needed.

Q: How does Vexcel’s digital surface model (DSM) compare to LiDAR?

Vexcel’s digital surface model (DSM) provides accurate elevation information (up to 177 points per square meter) derived from high-resolution aerial imagery. It captures buildings, trees, utility infrastructure, and other above-ground features, making it well suited for vegetation management, clearance measurements, asset planning, and change detection across large service territories.

While LiDAR is commonly used for some specialized applications, utility companies use Vexcel’s DSM to complement or reduce the need for frequent LiDAR collections. With ongoing aerial imagery updates, utilities can monitor change over time, evaluate vegetation encroachment, and identify areas that require closer investigation.

Because the DSM is matched to Vexcel’s high-resolution imagery, teams can analyze elevation and visual context together in a single, aligned dataset, improving planning, maintenance, and operational decision-making. Read more in this article: Evaluating DSM and its Origin Source: LiDAR or Photogrammetry

Q: How does aerial imagery support utility vegetation management?

Vexcel aerial imagery helps utilities monitor vegetation near transmission and distribution infrastructure at scale. Utilities use Vexcel imagery to review tree growth, vegetation encroachment, access conditions, and surrounding environments to support vegetation management and corridor planning workflows.

Q: Can Vexcel products identify vegetation threatening power lines?

Yes. Vexcel Multispectral imagery helps utilities better identify vegetation health, density, and growth patterns near power infrastructure. Combined with Vexcel DSM data and aerial imagery, utilities can better understand where vegetation may threaten transmission and distribution corridors.

Q: How does Vexcel imagery help with utility asset inspection?

Vexcel imagery helps utilities review transmission lines, substations, poles, towers, access roads, and surrounding infrastructure across large geographic areas. Vexcel Obliques also provide angled views of utility assets and nearby conditions to better understand structures and surrounding environments.

Q: What role does aerial data play in utility disaster response?

Vexcel’s Gray Sky imagery helps utilities understand large-scale impacts after hurricanes, wildfires, and other catastrophic events. Utilities use Vexcel imagery to review damaged corridors, access conditions, and surrounding infrastructure to support damage assessment and post-event analysis.

Q: How can AI help utilities monitor infrastructure at scale?

Vexcel’s imagery and geospatial data are optimized for AI analysis, helping utilities identify infrastructure, vegetation risks, roadway access, and surrounding conditions across large service areas. Utilities use AI-derived insights to support corridor mapping, asset management, and infrastructure planning.

With Vexcel Intelligence, utilities can also search ortho and oblique imagery to find poles, substations, transmission corridors, vegetation encroachment, equipment, and other real-world features across their networks.

See What’s Possible

Looking to take the next step with our world class aerial imagery, elevation & 3D models, or AI-derived property and roadway analytics?

Connect with our team of experts and discuss how Vexcel can take your geospatial imagery and data to the next level.

Request a Demo

High Resolution & Accurate

Aerial Imagery for Electric Utilities

High Resolution & Accurate

Aerial Imagery for Electric Utilities

Urban & rural networks

7.5-15cm imagery

Digital surface models

AI optimized

How Vexcel Helps Utilities Companies

See Your Entire Utilities Network

Measure What Matters: Height, Clearance, Risk

See Infrastructure from Every Angle

See Infrastructure from Every Angle

See Infrastructure from Every Angle

See Infrastructure from Every Angle

Identify Vegetation Risk

AI for Electric Utilities

Assess Damage and Plan Recovery

Utilities Stories

Spot the Spark Before it Starts

High-res Imagery & DSM for Utilities Vegetation Management

Evaluating DSM and its Origin Source: LiDAR or Photogrammetry

FAQs about Vexcel for Utilities

See What’s Possible

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