Aging underground residential distribution (URD) cables is a growing problem in communities around the world, disrupting customers and causing business challenges for utility providers. But in most cases, the traditional remedy for URD cable failure—taking the impacted cable out of service and putting new cable in its place—has proven to be unfeasible. When cables fail, the resulting outages and the replacement work required to restore power create logistical problems that are usually unpredictable and expensive—costs that must be absorbed by the provider, the customer,...
How SCADA can help prevent repairs and service disruptions BY RICHARD CLARK, InduSoft Underground transmission and distribution lines create unique challenges, as they require special insulation materials to protect conductors, and complex cooling systems because heat cannot be dissipated in free...
Making appropriate cable component design and material choices BY DENNIS DOSS, General Cable ore than ever, society is realizing that energy resources are dwindling and becoming more expensive. In response, North American electric utilities offer consumers a variety of incentives to deploy energy...
Exploring the benefits of wide-area monitoring BY TED MYERS, On-Ramp Wireless The average citizen and business experiences over 120 minutes of electricity outage duration a year. This has a significant societal impact costing 10s to hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Furthermore, the measure...
Energy Ottawa offers a state-of-the-art, non-destructive cable measurement system for the dependable assessment of medium voltage distribution cables. We have partnered with National Research Council Canada (NRC), the Government of Canada’s premier research and technology organization, to...
Aging underground residential distribution (URD) cables is a growing problem in communities around the world, disrupting customers and causing business challenges for utility providers. But in most cases, the traditional remedy for URD cable failure—taking the impacted cable out of service...
Energy Ottawa offers a state-of-the-art, non-destructive cable measurement system for the dependable assessment of medium voltage distribution cables. We have partnered with National Research Council Canada (NRC), the Government of Canada’s premier research and technology organization, to...
Distribution companies are continually looking for ways to improve system reliability, all while conserving capital investments and operational costs. With an aging infrastructure, one of the main issues that utilities face is a way to assess the actual condition of their capital assets. With...
The TSE Cable Scrapper is Al Asher and Sons’ latest product innovation for 2015. Formerly known as OK Champion, the industry has long recognized the Cable Scrapper as the go-to product for salvaging underground cable up to four-inch diameter. The machine will pull, cut, and load cable all day...
In recent years, the cost to bury high-voltage power lines has decreased dramatically. The American Transmission Company reports that installation costs for underground transmission lines (over 100 kilovolts) are now only 2.5 to 10 times the cost of an equivalent overhead line. Consequently, the...
How to prevent failure with partial discharge testing BY HENNING OETJEN, Megger Partial discharge (PD) measurements are increasingly used as a reliable and non-destructive diagnostic method to detect weak spots in the insulation of underground cables. Routinely, partial discharge measurements are...
