Underground Monitoring
Why It's Important
Underground circuits are more resilient and experience less frequent faults. But they also have less remote visibility so when a fault occurs outage durations are longer. To overcome these challenges utilities are turning to underground line sensing and analytics to enable proactive remote monitoring and improve reliability.
How It Works
Sentient Energy’s solution for monitoring underground circuits includes line sensors for feeders (UM3+) and URD (UM1), plus the Ample Analytics Platform. Sensors communicate via cellular or mesh networks to Ample which aggregates sensor data, visualizes it, and provides an interface to integrate the data with utility OT/IT systems such as SCADA, OMS, ADMS.
Key Features
The Sentient Energy underground line sensors capture system data for fault location and load monitoring. This provides utilities with greater remote visibility of underground circuits to more quickly react to outages and to proactively prevent them. Features include:
Line Sensors
- IEEE 495 compliant for reliable fault detection
- Accurate fault magnitudes and load current measurements (+/- 1%)
- 256 samples per cycle waveform capture
- IP68 rating for UM3+ Compact submersible operation
Ample
- Advanced analytics capabilities
- On-premises, hybrid or cloud deployment
- API for integration with SCADA/OMS/ADMS
Underground Monitoring Benefits
Implementing line sensing and analytics on underground circuits modernizes ongoing management delivering the following benefits:
- Operations – More precise fault location to reduce fault-finding times and drive down underground outage duration metrics
- Planning – Improved network load flow models for better decision-making
- Asset Management – Detection of overloaded cable segments and transformers for preemptive replacement
