Cable Test Vans by KEP for Reliable, Easy and Efficient Cable Fault Location

ETL-40 Vehicle Based System

Diagnostics of power cable sheath presents one of the biggest challenges in transmitting and distributing electricity, with the percentage of failure during cable exploitation still being high. These
failures happen due to the extremely long length of cable lines, soil inhomogeneity, and cable sheath heterogeneity along all cable length.

With the purpose of detecting serious insulation defects, megohmmeters are widely used. However, their readings cannot be relied on for the final evaluation of sheath condition because the readings depend mostly on the cable length and condition of bondings.



This is explained by the fact that the capacitance of power cables is high and, thus, is not fully charged in the time of resistance measurement. Therefore, the readings of a megohmmeter will not only be based on leakage current, but on charging current as well.

The most widespread method of monitoring the cable line sheath condition is testing with high direct current voltage. The aim of high voltage testing is to timely identify and fix degradation defects of cable sheath, couplings and bondings in order to prevent the appearance of cable faults during operation. So, the task of high voltage testing is to decrease quantity of cable failures while they are in being used.

The whole range of equipment required for diagnostics and high voltage testing is integrated in cable test vans by KEP.

Cable test vans by KEP allow to conduct high voltage testing of power cables and other elements of power grid systems such as insulators, power transformers winding, arresters, etc. The usage of such cable test vans makes cable fault location process much more efficient, easily tackling the issues that have been troublesome for power engineers for a long time.

Depending on the fault locating conditions, the distance to a cable fault can be measured with the incorporated RIF-9 using the TDR method, while the combination of surge wave generator and P-900 can be used to locate a fault with an acoustic method, and the combination of the LFG-generator and surge wave locator P-900 – with an inductive method.

In addition, the application of the time domain reflectometer RIF-9 makes burning at the place of fault unnecessary, which accelerates the process of fault location and elimination. As for the acoustic method, it has almost solved the issue of locating difficult-to-detect single-phase faults and fused cable faults.

Another advantage of cable test vans by KEP is that these can be mounted into any vehicle according to customers’ choice depending on specific application circumstances.

VLF-60 Very Low Frequency High Potential Tester

Also, KEP’s cable test vans can be customized to meet the customers’ requirements. For example, in order to test XPLE insulation cables, cable test vans by KEP can be equipped with a very low frequency high potential tester.

The main priority of applying high voltage test equipment is the safety of servicing personal. The experience which has been gained in the course of cable test system exploitation confirms that the cable test vans by KEP correspond to the industry’s electrical safety standards.

Alexei Tiatiushkin

Marketing manager

KharkovEnergoPribor Ltd.

marketing@keppowertesting.uk

http://www.kep.ua

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