Knowing the condition of cables

Before a cable leaves the fac­to­ry, man­u­fac­tur­ers inspect its con­di­tion imme­di­ate­ly after pro­duc­tion. How is the insu­la­tion per­form­ing? Are there signs of par­tial dis­charges? And how do elec­tri­cal sig­nals change as they trav­el through the cable? HiMON^® cap­tures this infor­ma­tion and uses it to cre­ate a tech­ni­cal fin­ger­print which shows whether the cable pass­es all tests and also serves as a ref­er­ence for future oper­a­tion. This is extreme­ly valu­able for grid oper­a­tors as they can then com­pare the cable’s cur­rent con­di­tion with its base­line val­ues at any time and detect devi­a­tions ear­ly on. The con­di­tion assess­ment thus begins even before com­mis­sion­ing.

Once the cable has suc­cess­ful­ly passed its tests, it is ready for instal­la­tion. It now becomes part of the pow­er grid – and HiMON^® along with it. Var­i­ous sen­sor types are installed along the cable route. HiMON^® Blue, for exam­ple, is mount­ed at inter­vals of twelve kilo­me­ters on the cable joints to detect even the small­est par­tial dis­charges. This allows the sys­tem to detect and locate ear­ly signs of insu­la­tion dam­age. HiMAG^® Red, on the oth­er hand, is locat­ed at the ends of the cable route. It mea­sures sig­nal pat­terns that occur dur­ing a cable break­down to deter­mine its exact loca­tion. For grid oper­a­tors, this is a deci­sive advan­tage – pre­cise fault loca­tion saves them valu­able time and high costs in an emer­gency. After all, they not only know that dam­age has occurred, but also exact­ly where.

Once the cable is con­nect­ed and laid, its dai­ly life in the pow­er grid begins. Whether buried under­ground or under­wa­ter, the rav­ages of time now take their toll. Envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors and pow­er fluc­tu­a­tions cause the cable to age and exac­er­bate even the small­est weak­ness­es that may have arisen dur­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing or instal­la­tion – more so in some places, less in oth­ers. HiMON^® reli­ably iden­ti­fies which sec­tions are par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed and could become prob­lem­at­ic. To do this, the mon­i­tor­ing plat­form con­tin­u­ous­ly col­lects data, con­sol­i­dates it in the cloud, and com­pares it with the cable’s tech­ni­cal fin­ger­print. This allows HiMON^® to detect even the slight­est changes and report poten­tial weak points via a traf­fic-light sys­tem. Net­work oper­a­tors can thus iden­ti­fy where a prob­lem is devel­op­ing ear­ly on, long before it becomes a prob­lem. This makes cable main­te­nance more proac­tive and gives net­work oper­a­tors sig­nif­i­cant­ly more time to plan and imple­ment mea­sures.

But what about the many cables that have been in use for decades? HiMON^® is per­fect for these too – because the tech­nol­o­gy can be retro­fit­ted. The cable doesn’t even need to be cut open. The sen­sors can sim­ply be wrapped around the cable. This way, HiMON^® pro­vides valu­able data for con­di­tion assess­ment even in old­er indus­tri­al net­works. But that’s not all. The mon­i­tor­ing plat­form also includes HIGHVOLT’s ser­vice and exper­tise so that net­work oper­a­tors don’t need to view or ana­lyze the mea­sure­ment data them­selves. In addi­tion to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence for pat­tern recog­ni­tion, the experts at the Dres­den-based com­pa­ny pro­vide sup­port. Depend­ing on the ser­vice lev­el, they active­ly mon­i­tor cable health, eval­u­ate anom­alies, and pro­vide net­work oper­a­tors with con­crete rec­om­men­da­tions for action.

HiMON^® mon­i­tors under­ground cables, sub­ma­rine cables, and over­head lines wher­ev­er out­ages would be prob­lem­at­ic. The sys­tem detects anom­alies ear­ly on, pin­points faults with pre­ci­sion, and helps grid oper­a­tors main­tain crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture with fore­sight.

Sen­sors along the cable detect elec­tri­cal sig­nals direct­ly dur­ing oper­a­tion. The mon­i­tor­ing plat­form ana­lyzes the data in real time, detects even the slight­est changes, and pin­points faults with meter-lev­el accu­ra­cy – serv­ing as a dig­i­tal ear­ly-warn­ing sys­tem for pow­er grids.

Every mea­sure­ment pro­vides data. And the more data there is, the bet­ter our under­stand­ing of a cable becomes. HiMON^® con­sol­i­dates these vast amounts of data and uses them to build a dig­i­tal twin. In the future, this vir­tu­al copy will show how the cable will per­form under spe­cif­ic con­di­tions. This trans­forms sim­ple mon­i­tor­ing into true pre­dic­tive main­te­nance – aging can be sim­u­lat­ed, risks assessed even ear­li­er, and mea­sures planned well in advance. At the same time, insights from the sim­u­la­tions can be applied to oth­er cables. For net­work oper­a­tors, this shows, for exam­ple, which lines, under com­pa­ra­ble con­di­tions, could next become crit­i­cal. In addi­tion, cable man­u­fac­tur­ers gain faster insights into where aging begins first, allow­ing them to specif­i­cal­ly address these weak points dur­ing devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing. Thus, in the com­ing years, not only will the data­base grow, but so will the HiMON^® uni­verse itself. Togeth­er with grid oper­a­tors and cable man­u­fac­tur­ers, HIGHVOLT is con­tin­u­ous­ly devel­op­ing the plat­form fur­ther – with new fea­tures, new appli­ca­tions, and ever-increas­ing knowl­edge derived from real-world mea­sure­ments direct­ly in the field.