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Cable condition monitoring

Synchromerger™ offers earlier cable fault detection than conventional solutions.

Although existing technologies provide some automation, they do not offer early cable failure warning to identify and prevent costly outages. Using Synaptec’s Synchromerger™ technology, you can monitor root causes whilst improving the precision of real-time thermal rating.

Download cable condition monitoring white paper

Challenges in cable condition monitoring

By their nature, underground power cable systems are difficult and costly to access and inspect. Some automation has been made possible by installing permanent DTS (Distributed Temperature Sensing), and in some rare cases permanent PD (Partial Discharge) monitoring technologies, but these techniques do not provide early warning of failures at every joint, and often miss the root causes of failure. Cable screen continuity and earth faults, flooding, and sheath voltage limiter faults can all occur at bonding locations along the circuit, which are not easily inspected manually or instrumented for permanent, online monitoring.

Our solution

Our passive sensor technology is ideally suited to resolving these challenges, with continuous and synchronous measurements streamed from every cable joint and termination by Synchromerger™. By monitoring cable sheath current using Synaptec’s unique and totally passive Distributed Electrical Sensing (DES) technology, it is possible to provide more accurate circuit modelling data, improving the precision of real-time thermal ratings whilst also monitoring for the root causes of asset failure that lead to sheath and screen damage, overheating, water trees, electrical trees, PD, and eventual flashover.

The addition of phase voltage and current sensing enables the monitoring of electrical transients and harmonic content. Transients from switching sources, capacitor banks, and inductive loads, commonly associated with power electronics can stress circuit components and over time introduce damage. Transients can slowly degrade insulation eventually leading to localised overheating and short circuit currents. Synaptec’s cable condition monitoring technology provides utilities with a totally unique and comprehensive set of asset insights, allowing more failure modes to be monitored for progression and providing actionable insights at significantly earlier stages of degradation.