An overhead line is known as overhead wire or cable which is hung between poles or pylon. The function is to transmit and distribute electric energy or signals to switching stations, substations, electric public vehicles, and so on. Overhead lines comprise one or more insulated electrical wires or cables. Live line working, otherwise called hotline maintenance, remains the support of electrical hardware, regularly working at high voltage, while the electricity is on or off condition.

To do maintenance for the live overhead line is very high risk compare to the offline transmission lines. Therefore, a proper maintenance procedure is needed in order to perform live maintenance so that the power utilities can reduce the power disturbance and maintenance cost for transmission lines and other equipment. The core procedures for live maintenance were created in the last twentieth century, and both work techniques and hardware were later advanced to manage future higher demand in voltage and power

1. In the 1960s, the research facility came out that there were instruments and suits that could be used in direct contact with higher voltage limits. These techniques can be employed to enable safe work at the highest transmission voltage level. With the need for live line work as well as the evolving growth of technology, these live line work techniques are constantly advanced and new.

Environmental concerns and lack of new power line construction on account of forced limitations are making the maintenance work increasingly difficult for utilities to utilize planned outages during transmission line maintenance. Additionally, constantly increasing the power load and consumer demand were the factors that made live maintenance the only viable solution. Thus, highly specialized tools and techniques are required. Equipment and work methods of performing live line maintenance mitigate the considerable hazards of working on energized power lines. They all are intended to prevent current flow from equipment and through linemen

2. The techniques and methods used are hot stick (insulated pole), insulating gloves or rubber gloves, bare hand (potential), helicopter techniques (wearing Faraday suit), and robotic technologies including ground-based, suspended, and aerial robots [23]. Safety considerations when working direct and how to perform live maintenance is safer during energizing because the linesman is aware of the dangers involved which will lead to being more cautious than de-energized.

This chapter will outline the main idea and aims of the research to be proposed. Furthermore, this will shed some light on live working techniques or methods on overhead lines (OHL) maintenance. This chapter will discuss some important aspects of the current study such as research background, research problem, aims and objectives, and contribution of the study.