Remote power cable fault location will reduce time and cost

28Jan

New technology for cable fault location will make it possible for every electrician to find cable faults as quickly as the most experienced operator.

Cable faults are the most common faults in the High Voltage networks. The industrial and society demands today are extremely impatient when faced with lack of electricity.

Cable fault location is not a straightforward measurement process. It is very intuitive work using many instruments and tools. Even the most sophisticated equipment today requires a highly experienced operator on-site. This was the biggest challenge the industry was facing – an average fault location process takes a total of four hours (which includes average driving time to destination, fault confirmation and driving back).

Solution

With PowerView software technology and products for Remote Cable Fault Location, cable faults will be simple enough for any electrician to perform as fast as the worlds most experienced professional.

PowerView has worked to make the equipment, software and technology compatible with most of the existing products on the market. It works with the present Windows and Linux based platforms for Centralised PC operated fault locating equipment and most of the portable instruments such as ground microphones, cable route tracers and earth pulse potential meters for sheath fault pinpointing, so the technology will be more available for the industry.

Fault finding can now be completely directed from a remote location

Pre-location

The operator communicates with all existing Centralised (PC controlled) test vans from a 3rd location. Full control of the test van is established with cyber secured software HIPAA and PCI compliant with advanced features such as -AES 256-bit session encryption, Two-factor authentication, Speed monitoring and Secure connection break algorithm. The operator on-site just needs to connect the test leads to cables and enable HV by turning the key, allowing the remote operator to do testing, fault pre-location and conversion.

Pinpointing

If pre-stored, the cable route can be displayed for the operator and if route needs to be traced, the remote operator takes over. With this new technology, the remote operator has, in front of him, a portable instrument display, setup gauges and he can hear the sound coming from the cable route tracer from a remote location. Using special software for sound filtering and amplification, he can manually fine tune according to the exact terrain situation. This will improve and ease pinpoint accuracy.

Documentation and reporting GIS management system is possible. Next steps are displayed as a virtual route in front of the on-site operator. With this, the remote operator guides the on-site operator to the fault. With similar processes, cable surging and sheath fault pinpointing is performed.

Advanced 3rd site noise rejection software algorithm (and accessories for the portable equipment on-site) will help the remote operator hear the surge signal free from background noise.

Using this technology, engineers can now find cable faults from the comfort of their office or utilities and companies can utilise PowerView’s or 3rd party certified services for remote cable fault location.

The new technology, equipment and software will serve the power industry’s demand for faster and cheaper cable fault location:

• the total time for cable fault location will be considerably reduced
• experts within the utility can locate faults from the office
• will be more productive (no more hours and days wasted driving to the fault location and back)
• users with less experienced personal can benefit from expert services

PowerView invented this remote application. The software and equipment are developed with the National University of Faculty of electronics and Information technology FEIT Skopje.