Use Case:
Detecting Heat Loss and Preventing Expensive Leaks in District-Heating Networks with Thermal Drone Inspections

About the Client:
FUG (Fernwärme Ulm) operates the district-heating network in Ulm, supplying households and businesses with reliable thermal energy. Their network spans more than 200 km across the city.

What Problem We Are Helping the Client Overcome:
Leaks in district-heating pipelines can cause significant heat loss and drive repair costs into the thousands per incident. Traditional inspections only cover limited sections and make early detection difficult. FUG needed a scalable, precise, and data-driven way to monitor the entire network.

What FairFleet’s Solution Is:
FairFleet performs aerial thermal inspections to detect heat anomalies indicating leaks or insulation failures. The entire network is captured quickly and non-invasively, ensuring complete, consistent coverage. All results are processed on FairFleet’s platform, where specialized tools automatically identify anomalies, display them on a map, and make localization fast and reliable.

Benefit for the Client:
Thermal drone inspections uncover roughly one issue every 2 km, revealing around 100 anomalies across a 200 km network. Each early-detected leak prevents substantial heat loss and costly emergency repairs. Combined with our platform’s automated anomaly detection and clear mapping tools, FUG achieves a strong ROI of 30× to 75×, making proactive inspections one of the most effective maintenance strategies for district-heating operators.