The cable fault tester under UHV power can help many power workers conduct various power tests more conveniently.

Digital fault location technology in pipelines to address existing challenges

High voltage transmission lines are an essential component of modern distribution, energy, and automation systems. Over the past few decades, millions of miles of power cables have been laid in the air. However, due to the significant advantages provided by underground power lines, including their ability to withstand harsh weather conditions such as rain, pollution, snow, and storms, underground power line networks currently dominate in most parts of the world

However, despite the availability of many fault location techniques, underground lines still pose significant challenges in determining the exact location of faults - a daunting task for technicians and other industry experts. The existing challenges can be effectively addressed by understanding various fault location technologies, adopting new technologies, and upgrading existing fault location technologies.

In addition, as digital trends continue to penetrate various industrial sectors around the world, significant efforts are being made to focus on using digital technology to detect faults in power lines. There are many reasons for power line failures, including conductor breakage, insulation faults, and weak cables. Therefore, detecting and resolving power line faults is crucial for restoring power supply, minimizing downtime, and power distribution.

Accuracy and reliability drive the continuous improvement of the adoption rate of traveling wave technology

In the past few decades, deploying traveling waves for fault detection has become one of the most effective and reliable fault location technologies, especially for long transmission lines. In addition, by integrating with line protection relays, traveling waves can provide important insights for technicians and operators.

Although the traveling wave principle is a known concept in the power industry, its adoption is on the rise due to the limitations of impedance based principles in the current situation. Deploying the traveling wave principle to detect fault locations has significant advantages over phasor based components.

In addition, calculating the fault location by evaluating the difference between the arrival times of wave pulses significantly improves the accuracy and precision of the fault localization process. In the current situation, due to technological advancements and the emergence of innovative solutions, digital substation tools can be used to accurately measure time in various distributed devices.

In addition, another significant advantage that can be observed is that the traveling wave principle is largely unaffected by the series compensation of long transmission lines. In addition, due to the fact that traveling waves are not limited to applications in AC transmission lines, but can also be deployed in HVDC grids, traveling waves have gained great popularity in the past decade.

In addition, traveling waves propagate at speeds close to the speed of light, which is a key factor in transmitting data related to existing faults to the line. They end at a fast speed, allowing for quick processing of detected faults. Therefore, in summary, due to the limitations of impedance based principles and advantageous functions, it is expected that the use of traveling wave technology for fault detection in long transmission lines will increase in the coming years.