Praetorian Sensing for Above Ground Power Cables
Monitoring above-ground power cables is essential for ensuring the safety and reliability of the electrical grid. Monitoring the cable's wear, damage, or corrosion is extremely difficult, and often, power failure or data outage is the first sign of a problem. HAWK, a leading provider of above-ground power cable monitoring systems, can assist you with all your needs.
Various methods and technologies are used for this purpose, including visual inspections, Infrared thermography, acoustic monitoring, remote monitoring, and the latest technology, Fiber optic sensing. This technology uses fiber optic cables to detect temperature, strain, or vibration changes along power cables, which can help identify potential faults or failures. Praetorian sensing for above-ground power cables is the most accurate and innovative way to monitor above-ground power cables.
Contact us today to learn more about our above-ground power cable monitoring system and underground power cable monitoring.
How it Works: Sensing Methods
Praetorian Fiber Optic Sensing (FOS) uses a combination of Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) to protect underground buried assets. By exciting a fiber optic core within a cable the Praetorian Interrogator can utilize the fibers as a distributed network equivalent to up to 1.6 Million individual vibration, temperature, and strain sensors.
Because Praetorian utilizes several different sensing methods, observing events in many physically independent ways is possible. Consequently, Praetorian is inherently resistant to taking a given reading and giving a false alarm due to the requirement for multiple physical effects simultaneously occurring at the exact location to signify an event and trigger an alarm.
How it Works: Monitoring
Through a combination of distributed vibration, temperature, and strain monitoring, it is possible to determine multitudes of different physical events along a cable, including but not limited to:
- Detection of partial discharge
- Detection of hot spots
- Early alert of third-party intrusion (accidental or nefarious)
- Conductor break detection
- Ground condition assessment
- Prevention of arc flash events from conductor contact
- Detection of optical loss
- Detection of fiber break
- Detection of pit or trench lid being opened
- Determination of network operational status (thermal loading)
- Praetorian also uses geo-tag alarms, allowing security or maintenance teams to respond immediately.
Frequently Asked Questions
Time of Flight. Locations of events are able to be accurately determined by a method called time of flight. The amount of time from sending the laser pulse to receiving a return signal is recorded. Due to the internal properties of a fiber optic core, the speed of light through a fiber is consistent at approximately two thirds of the speed of light through a vacuum (around 400μs for a 40km (25 miles) round trip). As this is consistent, the return time can be used to calculate a distance on the fiber.
Often the primary way of preventing damage to buried assets is to prevent them being struck and damage by third parties. As significant excavations are generally required to unearth buried assets due to their depth of cover the process of excavation takes sufficient time that a warning provided quickly enough can give an operator enough time to alert the third party to the dangers below them. Different digging events generate different signals which are picked up by the monitored fiber that are either part of or buried alongside the asset.
No, it requires no additional field infrastructure such as power or communications
Because Fiber Optic Technology provides a solution that is preventative rather then reactive
Yes, we encourage it in fact! We have specially made systems that are shipped all over the world specifically for technology trials.
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