Case Study: Eskom achieves faster, lower-cost, high-accuracy power-line surveys with Trimble MX2 and Trident Imaging Hub

Mobile mapping improves information flow and cuts costs for a South African electric utility

Eskom, South Africa’s national power utility that supplies roughly 95% of the country’s electricity (and 45% across the continent), faced growing strain on supply margins as the economy expanded. Managing a vast network—about 360,000 km of lines and 175 transmission substations—required high‑quality spatial data for maintenance and planning, but traditional aerial lidar campaigns were costly and slow.

Eskom adopted a Trimble MX2 mobile mapping solution (lidar, 360° imagery, GNSS‑inertial and onboard processing) with POSPac and Trident software to collect, post‑process and deliver georeferenced point clouds and imagery for lines and substations. The approach yielded 10–20 mm accuracy, sped surveys up 3–5×, cut surveying costs, enabled near‑real‑time delivery to designers and contributed to about a 15% reduction in long‑distance energy losses versus 2013.

Eskom’s