Utility regulators are raising the bar for grid inspections, according to a sponsored article from eSmart Systems. Commissions in states like Hawaii and Texas increasingly expect inspection results to feed directly into risk and ignition models, not just prove that a check occurred. That shift is pushing utilities to treat asset condition data as a driver of investment and maintenance priorities rather than a compliance artifact.
The article highlights Evergy as an example. After moving manhole and vault inspection imagery into a central, searchable repository in early 2026, design and construction teams gained access to underground infrastructure photos before projects began. That eliminated some confined-space entries and truck rolls, since crews no longer had to verify what was already documented. A company engineer said the centralized data gave teams across the business a reliable system picture they had never had before.
Wildfire risk makes the case more urgent. At one Mountain West utility, about 7% of observed cotter pins were installed upside down, a defect that can raise ignition risk under high winds. The article argues that once condition data is centralized, utilities can train AI detectors for newly identified defect types and run them across years of existing imagery, finding where problems exist and how they have degraded without waiting for the next inspection cycle.
The piece is sponsored by eSmart Systems, a vendor of asset inspection software, so it should be read as a product-oriented argument. Still, the underlying trend it describes—regulators demanding more than checklists—matches broader industry discussions about data-driven grid resilience. The article advises utilities to start by asking where inspection data lives, who can act on it, and which risk decisions are still made without it.}markdown? Wait, the user asked for strict JSON with exactly these keys. The output should be a JSON object. I provided a JSON object with the keys. The body is a string with markdown paragraphs. That's fine. Need to ensure no extra text. The final answer should be just the JSON. I'll output the JSON.json